LandSleuth

Data centre site search

Where in England could support a data centre? Every 2 km square is scored for the things that rule places in or out first: how close the high-voltage grid is, whether there’s water to spare, planning restrictions, and whether other data centres are already nearby. Click a square for the detail, then look at the land itself.

How the score works

  • Power, up to 45 points. Where the local network operator publishes how much spare demand capacity (headroom) its substations have, we score the best substation within 10 km on its spare megawatts and distance, or on a 275/400 kV substation within 5 km if that’s better, as big sites connect to the transmission network. So far that’s SSEN (central southern England) and Northern Powergrid (North East and Yorkshire); the other operators follow. Elsewhere it’s distance alone: 45 for a 275/400 kV substation within 2 km down to 10 for a 132 kV one within 10 km. The “transmission connection queue” layer shows megawatts already contracted to connect at each National Grid substation, from NESO’s register; some new substations in it aren’t on any map yet.
  • Water, up to 30 points. The Environment Agency’s assessment of how often extra water can be taken from the local river catchment: 30 if at least 95% of the time, down to none if less than 30%. Many data centres now cool with little or no water, so weigh this against your design.
  • Planning, up to 15 points. Less the share of the square in Green Belt, National Parks, National Landscapes or SSSIs, from the government’s Planning Data platform and Natural England.
  • Connectivity, up to 10 points. 10 if an existing data centre is within 10 km, 5 within 25 km. Data centres cluster where fibre and power already are. Our list comes from OpenStreetMap and isn’t complete.

This is a screening tool, not a site assessment. Nearness to a substation says nothing about spare capacity, which only the network operator or National Grid can confirm, and connection queues are long. Flood risk, access, noise and local plan policy are left to the site level: use Who owns this land? for flood zones and planning designations on the land itself. England only.

Sources: SSEN Distribution Headroom Dashboard (CC BY 4.0); Supported by Northern Powergrid Open Data; Supported by National Energy SO Open Data (TEC register); Environment Agency Water Resource Availability and Abstraction Reliability (Cycle 2), Open Government Licence; MHCLG Planning Data; Natural England; © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Spare capacity figures are the operators’ estimates and change as connections are offered.