Silicon Valley.
The Valley is the strangest major market in America: 489 MW of inventory, nearly 100 MW of it built and sitting dark waiting for Silicon Valley Power interconnections, and the highest rents in the country. It is also the one market where your electrical safety program answers to Cal/OSHA's Title 8 Electrical Safety Orders, not federal OSHA's 1910.333.
The market right now
Fifty-odd data centers crowd Santa Clara's municipal utility territory because SVP's rates historically ran far below PG&E's. The land ran out years ago, so growth here means densification: AI retrofits and liquid-cooling conversions executed inside live 1990s- and 2000s-era buildings. SVP's $450M system upgrade lands in 2028, and with it a concentrated energization wave for everything built-but-idle.
- 489.2 MW total inventory, up 4% YoY (CBRE H2 2025)
- 144 MW under construction, 84% preleased (CBRE H2 2025)
- Vacancy 4.7% vs 1.4% national average — constrained supply, slow growth (CBRE H2 2025)
- Asking rents $180-275/kW/month, among the highest of the primary markets (CBRE H2 2025)
- Nearly 100 MW of completed Santa Clara capacity sits idle awaiting grid connections (DCD/Tom's Hardware 2025)
- Rates for 10 MW+ requirements rose ~19%, the largest increase among core markets (CBRE H1 2025)
Every campus on the map
Solid copper markers are operating campuses; white markers are under construction; dashed outlines are announced or planned. Locations are approximate campus-level centroids compiled from public sources — county records, operator announcements, and market reports — as of August 2026. Dense clusters are grouped. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.
Operating campuses mapped
- Digital Realty Santa Clara cluster — Digital Realty · Santa Clara. One of DLR's densest metro clusters, ~10 buildings in the SVP territory
- Equinix Great Oaks campus — Equinix · South San Jose. SV10/SV11-era hyperdense interconnection campus on the PG&E side
- Vantage Santa Clara — Vantage Data Centers · Santa Clara. Vantage's original HQ campus, multiple buildings
- CoreSite Santa Clara — CoreSite · Santa Clara. SV7-SV9 enterprise/cloud on-ramp campus
- NTT SV1 — NTT Global Data Centers · Santa Clara. NTT's Silicon Valley flagship in SVP territory
- CyrusOne Santa Clara — CyrusOne · Santa Clara. Hyperscale-leased colo in the Santa Clara core
- Stack Silicon Valley campuses — Stack Infrastructure · Santa Clara / San Jose. Three campuses totaling ~200 MW (DCD 2025)
- Colovore — Colovore · Santa Clara. Liquid-cooling-first colo serving high-density AI racks
- Hurricane Electric Fremont — Hurricane Electric · Fremont. FMT1/FMT2 — major carrier-neutral IX presence in the East Bay
Under construction & planned
- Microsoft Alviso — Microsoft · North San Jose (Alviso) · under construction. 48 MW; broke ground June 2026, ~18-month build, Microsoft's first owned San Jose DC (NBC Bay Area 2026)
- Microsoft San Jose expansion — Microsoft · San Jose · planned. Applications for two additional San Jose data centers (DCD)
- Digital Realty Santa Clara (unpowered) — Digital Realty · Santa Clara · under construction. Permitted 2019, built, awaiting SVP grid connection until ~2028 upgrade (DCD 2025)
- Stack Santa Clara (unpowered) — Stack Infrastructure · Santa Clara · under construction. 48 MW facility complete but idle pending SVP interconnection (DCD 2025)
- San Jose large energy-use pipeline — Multiple applicants · San Jose · planned. City maintains an active review pipeline of data center / large energy-use projects (City of San Jose 2026)
- Westbank downtown San Jose — Westbank · Downtown San Jose · planned. Downtown data center + district energy concept in the city's project pipeline
Power
Service territory: Silicon Valley Power (Santa Clara municipal) · PG&E.
- SVP is executing a $450M system upgrade scheduled to complete in 2028 to serve queued data center load (DCD 2025)
- Completed Digital Realty and Stack facilities in Santa Clara are built but unpowered pending interconnection (DCD 2025)
- SVP expects California data center energy demand to double over the next decade (DCD 2025)
- SVP's municipal rates, historically well below PG&E's, concentrated ~50 data centers in Santa Clara — the market's defining utility advantage
The regulatory picture
Enforcement. Cal/OSHA state plan (DOSH) with its own Title 8 Electrical Safety Orders, permit regime and generally stricter enforcement than federal OSHA
Licensing. California requires CSLB C-10 electrical contractor licensure, and electricians working for C-10 contractors must hold DIR/DAS general electrician certification
Also in play. Santa Clara's municipal utility (SVP) rate advantage built the cluster; San Jose is actively processing multiple 'large energy-use' data center applications (City of San Jose 2026); no state sales-tax incentive for data centers
What it means for the work
Retrofit work in occupied facilities is where energized-work justification gets tested. When the building can't come down and the tenant can't move, the pressure to work it hot is constant — and the 110.2(B) exceptions were written precisely to resist that pressure.
Cal/OSHA's Title 8 Electrical Safety Orders differ from federal OSHA — programs written for 1910.333 need a California overlay
Retrofit-heavy market: AI densification and liquid-cooling conversions happen inside live 1990s-2000s buildings, maximizing energized-work pressure (70E 110.2(B) discipline)
~100 MW of built-but-idle capacity means a concentrated energization and commissioning wave when SVP's 2028 upgrade lands
Land-constrained urban electrical rooms make NEC 110.26 working-space and egress violations a recurring finding
Market context is half the picture. The other half is the decision walk — the nine questions the 2027 edition asks before anyone opens a door on energized gear. Run it against the task, then check the room pages in the Data Center Application Series.
NFPA 70E classes taught on the 2027 edition, against data center topology, about 55 times a year — live virtual weekly, and private onsite days in Silicon Valley run against your one-lines for crews of 15 or more.