Check our math

The numbers we worked out ourselves.

Most figures on this site come straight from a document, and we link the page they're on. The rest we worked out ourselves, from public data and the developer's own numbers. Here is each one: what went in, the arithmetic, and where the inputs come from, so you can check it.

Nine times the electricity of all the homes in Cumberland County

The developer announced PAX-1 at 1.35 gigawatts. We worked out how much electricity that is in a year if the campus runs at 80 percent of it on average, about what power companies plan for, and set it beside a year of electricity for every home in Cumberland County: the Census's count of households, at the average Pennsylvania home's use.

If PAX-1 runs at	A year's electricity	The county's homes
All of its 1.35 gigawatts	11.8 billion kWh	11.3 times
80 percent of it	9.5 billion kWh	9.1 times
Half of it	5.9 billion kWh	5.7 times

The math

106,427 households × 817 kWh a month × 12 months: = 1.04 billion kWh a year
1,350 megawatts × 80% × 8,760 hours in a year: = 9.46 billion kWh a year
9.46 billion kWh ÷ 1.04 billion kWh: = 9.1

About 9 times

Read the announcement The Census's household count EIA's home electricity use Grid Strategies on data center use E3 on real data center loads

The details

The developer's announcement of July 15, 2025 puts the campus at “1.35 GW of capacity with expandability up to 1.8 GW”: three campuses, each with “a dedicated 450 MW substation.” A gigawatt is a thousand megawatts. At 1.8 gigawatts and the same 80 percent, PAX-1 would use about 12 times the electricity of the county's homes.

No one has published how hard PAX-1 will run. Data centers run around the clock, so they use more of their capacity than most customers. Duke Energy plans for new large customers to average 80 percent of their peak, and Dominion Energy reported that its large data centers in Virginia averaged 82 percent of theirs in 2024. Some data centers draw less than they are built for: PG&E found its data centers' peaks averaged about two-thirds of their rated load, and in one utility's records fewer than half averaged more than 80 percent of their peak. Even at half its capacity, PAX-1 would use more than five times the electricity of every home in the county.

The Census counts 106,427 households in the county, give or take 704, in its American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024. The 817 kilowatt-hours a month is the average for a Pennsylvania home in 2024, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Homes in the county may use somewhat more or less than the state's average.

The figure is for the campus built out. The same announcement puts its first 300 megawatts in service by mid-2027.

1,333 homes within a mile of the site

We took Cumberland County's 911 address points, its record of every address in the county, and kept the ones it marks as a home on a building. Then we measured each home's distance from the edge of the site.

Distance from the site's edge	Homes
1,000 feet	260
A quarter mile	454
One mile	1,333
A mile and a quarter	1,561
A mile and a half	1,773
Two miles	2,832

The math

1,142 of them in Middlesex ÷ 2,922 homes in the township: = 39%
191 of them in Silver Spring ÷ 1,333 within a mile: = 14%

See the county's address data See the Census blocks

The details

The county's records are as of September 28, 2026. Businesses are left out, and so are 92 addressed lots in new subdivisions where no home stands yet.

The four homes inside the site, on Country Club Road, are not counted. The nearest home outside it is about 80 feet from the line.

As a check, the 2020 Census counts about 1,030 to 1,060 housing units within the same mile. The county's records are newer, and they count addresses rather than the Census's housing units. On either count, more than 1,000 homes sit within a mile of the site.

About 16 homes on private wells within 1,000 feet

No public record lists which homes are on public water. So we placed each home we counted on DEP's map of the areas public water systems serve. A home inside one is likely on public water. A home outside all of them likely has its own well.

	Within 1,000 feet	Within a mile
Homes counted	260	1,333
Likely on public water	244	1,158
Likely on a private well	16	175

See DEP's water service areas Read the authority's June 2026 minutes Read the authority's November 2024 minutes See the state's well records See the county's water service map

The details

DEP's map is as of September 29, 2026. Near the site, the public water comes from the Middlesex Township Municipal Authority. Most of the homes within 1,000 feet are in Country Manor West and The Meadows, which the authority's minutes say its 12-inch main serves. Eleven of the 16 likely on wells line Country Club Road, along the site's southern edge.

The authority's June 2026 minutes say the developer finished moving its main on May 8, 2026. The drawing of the new main, in the authority's Right-to-Know records, shows it running along the site side of Country Club Road, past most of those eleven homes, so they may now be able to connect. We found no record of which, if any, have.

Two places needed a closer look, both more than 1,000 feet out. DEP's map splits two mobile home parks, and a park that size has to be on a regulated water system, not household wells, so we counted each park whole. Part of Cumberland Range Estates is missing from DEP's map, and the authority's minutes show that development's water lines being turned over to it in 2024, so we counted those 18 homes as public water.

As a check, we looked at the state's records of wells that drillers have reported. Within a mile, 26 percent of the homes outside the service areas have a reported household well within 300 feet of them, against 4 percent of the homes inside. The county's own map of public water, which it calls generalized, puts 3 of the 16 homes within 1,000 feet inside a service area.

These are estimates, neighborhood by neighborhood. DEP calls its boundaries approximate, and its map of the authority's area dates from February 2024. A home inside a service area may still use an old well, and a home outside may have a service line. A list of the authority's connections, or a knock on each door, would settle it.

615 acres of prime or statewide farmland

USDA's soil survey maps the soils of every county and rates each one for farming. We took every soil area that touches the site, cut each one to the site's outline, and added up the acres by rating.

USDA's rating	Acres	Share
Farmland of statewide importance	572.8	83%
Farmland of local importance	44.2	6%
Prime farmland	41.7	6%
Not prime farmland	34.2	5%

The math

572.8 acres of statewide importance + 41.7 acres of prime: = 614.5 acres
614.5 acres ÷ 692.9 acres in the site: = 89%

615 acres, about 9 in 10

Open USDA's Web Soil Survey What the classes mean

The details

We pulled the soil areas from USDA's Soil Data Access service on September 29, 2026. Cumberland County's survey is the version of September 5, 2025. Most of the 34 acres rated not prime are steep slopes.

Federal rules define prime farmland as land “that has the best combination of physical and chemical characteristics for producing food, feed, forage, fiber, and oilseed crops.” Each state sets its own criteria for farmland of statewide importance.

The survey maps soils at county scale, so the acres are close, not survey-exact. The ratings describe the soil, not how the land was used, though aerial photos from before construction show it in crops. To check the ratings yourself, open USDA's Web Soil Survey, draw the site as your area of interest, and look up its farmland classification.

Twice the industrial land in Middlesex

Cumberland County's planning department recorded the land use of every parcel in the county in 2020. We added up the Middlesex land in industrial use, measured from the parcel shapes, and set the PAX-1 site beside it.

	Acres	Share of the township
Industrial land in 2020	689	4.2%
The PAX-1 site	694	4.2%
Both together	1,383	8.4%

The math

689 acres in industrial use in 2020 + 694 acres of PAX-1: = 1,383 acres
1,383 acres ÷ 689 acres: = 2.0

PAX-1 alone will double it

See the county's land use data See the township boundary

The details

We took all 2,459 Middlesex parcels in the survey, as published on September 28, 2026. The township covers 16,412 acres. The survey is from 2020, so industrial land built since then is not counted. In it, the PAX-1 parcels were 546 acres of farmland and 147 acres the county classed as public.

19 times the permit's area

The stormwater permit PAX-1 builds under was issued for Cumberland Knoll, a 58-home subdivision. From 2018 until its third amendment in December 2025, the permit covered 36.37 acres. Since then it has covered 693.44 acres.

The math

693.44 acres now ÷ 36.37 acres before: = 19.1

19 times the area

View the appeal

The details

The permit's description calls Cumberland Knoll “58 total units on 15.3 acres.” That is the subdivision's lot area. The permit's own area was the 36.37 acres its notices of intent state, so we compare the permit's area then to its area now.

More than 1.5 million gallons from an inch of rain

The developer's engineer told the Supervisors each of the 16 buildings is about 156,000 square feet. USGS says an inch of rain on an acre is 27,154 gallons.

The math

16 buildings × 156,000 sq ft: = 2,496,000 sq ft of roof
2,496,000 sq ft ÷ 43,560 sq ft in an acre: = 57.3 acres
57.3 acres × 27,154 gallons: = 1,556,000 gallons

More than 1.5 million gallons

USGS: an inch of rain on an acre Watch the 156,000 square feet

The details

That counts the roofs alone. Roads, parking and equipment yards add more. At the August 19, 2026 meeting, the developer gave larger footprints: about 123,000 square feet for the first two buildings and 194,000 for the rest. That comes to about 68 acres of roof and 1.8 million gallons an inch. We use the smaller figure.

2,367 homes' worth of water a day

The municipality has allocated the campus 400,000 gallons of water a day. PennLive reported it as an amount “engineers say is equal to the consumption from 2,367 dwelling units,” the daily water of that many homes.

The math

400,000 gallons a day ÷ 2,367 homes: = 169 gallons a home

View the meeting notes Read the article

The details

The 2,367 is not our count. It is the engineers' conversion, as PennLive reported it, and it works out to 169 gallons a day for each home. On the Impacts page we set it beside the 1,333 homes we counted within a mile of the site.

694 acres, almost six Hersheyparks

The site is the four PAX-1 parcels in Cumberland County's tax map. Measured from their shapes, they cover 692.9 acres. The county planning department puts the Data Center Overlay, which covers the same four parcels, at about 694 acres, the figure we use everywhere else on this site. Every count on this page measures from this outline.

The math

694 acres ÷ 121 acres of Hersheypark: = 5.7

Almost six Hersheyparks

View the county review See Hersheypark's page

The details

The four parcels are numbers 21-06-0015-001, -013, -014 and -015.

10 more data centers within 60 miles

We counted every data center project within 60 miles of the site that was on DEP's data center permit tracker or before a local government on September 29, 2026. Of those 12, 2 stopped after residents pushed back, and the rest are proposed or under review.

Project	Miles	Status
Monroe Township, Cumberland County	8.6	In the works
Highlands East, Swatara Township, Dauphin County	17.3	In the works
Highlands West, Swatara Township, Dauphin County	17.3	In the works
South Hanover Township, Dauphin County	21.8	Stopped
Londonderry Township, Dauphin County	23.8	In the works
South Annville Township, Lebanon County	32.0	Stopped
Granville Township, Mifflin County	34.0	In the works
Lancaster AI Hub West, City of Lancaster	43.8	In the works
Lancaster AI Hub East, City of Lancaster	47.7	In the works
Mount Carmel Township, Northumberland County	52.0	In the works
Butler Township, Schuylkill County	54.1	In the works
New Castle Township, Schuylkill County	58.6	In the works

The math

12 projects − 2 paused or withdrawn: = 10

See the tracker

The details

Miles are straight-line distances from DEP's point for PAX-1. Each project sits at DEP's own point where it has one, otherwise at its street address, or at the middle of its township where no address has been published: South Hanover, South Annville and Granville.

We left off projects with only reported interest and no filing: several townships in York County, the Dauphin Highlands golf course sale, and the York 2 Energy Center announcement, along with one golf course taken out of consideration before any filing.

Monroe Township, Cumberland County: The partnership behind PAX-1 asked in April 2026 to present plans for a data center.
The letter to Monroe
Swatara Township, Dauphin County: Highlands East, a $10.5 billion campus on 157 acres, with plans before the township. DEP lists it as proposed.
Read the article See the tracker
Swatara Township, Dauphin County: Highlands West, by the same company. DEP lists it as proposed.
See the tracker
South Hanover Township, Dauphin County: Two data centers at a former quarry, filed in June 2026 and put on hold in August after residents raised concerns.
Read about the filing Read about the pause
Londonderry Township, Dauphin County: DEP lists it as proposed.
See the tracker
South Annville Township, Lebanon County: A $1.7 billion campus, withdrawn in May 2026 after the planning commission voted unanimously against the rezoning it needed.
Read the article
Granville Township, Mifflin County: One of the companies behind PAX-1 applied in July 2026 for six buildings, two days before a planned pause on data centers there.
Read the article
City of Lancaster: Lancaster AI Hub West, at 1375 Harrisburg Pike, under a benefits agreement with the city.
See the city's page
City of Lancaster: Lancaster AI Hub East, at 216 Greenfield Road. DEP has finished its review.
See the city's page See the tracker
Mount Carmel Township, Northumberland County: DEP lists it as proposed.
See the tracker
Butler Township, Schuylkill County: A campus for the company Nebius, under DEP review.
See the tracker
New Castle Township, Schuylkill County: DEP lists it as proposed.
See the tracker