← All glossary terms

Land, Permitting, and Environmental

Noise study

Noise study evaluates expected sound levels from generators, cooling equipment, transformers, construction, and operations. It can be central to community acceptance and permit conditions for data centers near residential or rural areas.

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Substation

A substation is a facility that switches, protects, transforms, meters, and controls power flows between grid elements or to a customer. For data center development, substation feasibility includes land, equipment, utility ownership, interconnection, transformer capacity, relay design, and schedule.

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Colocation

Colocation is a model where customers deploy IT equipment in a third-party data center rather than owning the entire facility. The provider supplies space, power, cooling, security, connectivity, and operating services under commercial agreements.

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Rack density

Rack density is the IT power deployed per rack, usually in kW per rack. AI and GPU workloads can push rack densities far above traditional enterprise deployments, changing cooling, floor loading, power distribution, and operations.

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