Five things to know if you’re a land developer building your first data centre

As demand for reliable, resilient, and efficient data centres increases, land developers and data centre companies are finding common ground. They need sites that offer power availability and fibre optic connectivity , water management solutions , and limited community disruption.

1. Pre-plan for power availability and grid connection, but also fibre and data clients

With grid interconnection queues now exceeding five years, land banking and pre-powered land are growing in popularity. This is leading developers to secure power before they have fully secured tenants.
Developers need to pre-plan if they want to have the ability to secure data clients for their newly developed data assets. With a contract for firm power in hand, developers give themselves an edge and can garner premium lease rates and compress time-to-market.

Another option developers should consider is a variety of behind-the-metre solutions, such as fuel cells, natural gas plants, battery energy storage systems (BESS), and the integration of renewables like wind and solar. These options can increase reliability, while alleviating long grid connections queues.

However, they each come with their own challenges. Natural gas increases carbon footprints, and the manufacturers of turbines and reciprocating engines have backlogs of orders extending several years.

Wind and solar require large amounts of land and generally do not provide the consistent power needed for data centres. While innovative technologies are currently being developed that can decrease power instability – like Ramboll’s new Universal Damping STATCOM – many of these have not reached the commercial market yet.

2. Ensure connectivity for fibre and data clients

In addition to power, sites need access to high-speed broadband to ensure they are not stranded assets that have unreliable connections. Fibre connectivity governs latency, resiliency, and time to market. Developers should validate both long-haul and metro access: proximity to diverse backbone routes, regional carrier hotels, and at least two physically separated metro ring entry points.

It’s also important to secure easements and rights-of-way early, confirm duct/conduit capacity for expansion, and design a clear path for multiple carriers to reach the site without shared single points of failure. AI-driven workloads raise the bar with high bandwidth (e.g., 400G/800G-ready optics), consistent low jitter, and predictable latency to cloud on-ramps and GPU clusters. If developers want their land to be data ready, they need to have contingency plans for rapid growth in counts and diverse routes as the needs of the industry evolve. Fibre readiness is a core factor in data centre land development and site selection.

3. Explore alternative water supply options for long-term viability

Water use in data centres is driven primarily by cooling systems, which are essential for maintaining safe operating temperatures for mission‑critical equipment. Cooling technologies vary significantly in water demand, energy requirements, and operational complexity, and their performance is strongly influenced by local climate conditions. As rack densities rise, AI workloads accelerate, and pressure increases on already‑strained water and wastewater infrastructure, proactive and strategic water management has become more important than ever.

Historically, data centres relied on municipal potable water; however, industry expansion into new and resource-limited regions requires careful evaluation of local water resources, infrastructure capacity, and system reliability. A range of alternative supply options – including reclaimed wastewater, raw surface or groundwater, harvested rainwater, and blended approaches supported by on‑site storage – can reduce reliance on potable water, protect community resources, and enhance the long‑term viability of a site.

4. Managing water discharge

In addition to securing cooling water supply, data centres must also plan for responsible water discharge. Discharge quality and quantity depend on the cooling technology used, the characteristics of the source water, and the chosen disposal pathway, such as publicly owned treatment works (POTW ) discharge, surface water outfalls, beneficial reuse, or zero liquid discharge. Treatment prior to discharge may be required based on local regulations and disposal methods. Early assessment of wastewater quality, treatment needs, and feasible discharge routes is critical to avoiding permitting delays or unexpected infrastructure constraints.