|
Sheila Bellinger, VP and Southwest director of the Grub & Ellis National Data Center Group, speaks at DatacenterDynamics, Dallas, Dec. 10, 2009
Similar to the rest of the US, demand for data center space in the Dallas-FortWorth area of Texas is outpacing supply.
“The supply of data centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is at a minimum today,” said Sheila Bellinger, VP and southwest director at Grubb & Ellis’ National Data Center Group. “There’s twice as much demand as (there is) available data center space.”
Bellinger provided an overview of data center real estate in the DFW market at the DatacenterDynamics conference in Richardson, Texas (a Dallas suburb) Thursday. Grubb & Ellis is a nationwide commercial real estate consultancy, big part of whose business is data center space.
“Demand is outpacing supply and pricing is up in this market,” she said. The shortage of space does not speak to a small amount of data center space in the market but more to the amount of demand. There is a large number of data centers in the area but much of that space is occupied.
In the last three years, about 1.5 million square feet of data center space was absorbed by the DFW market, Bellinger said. Some of the organizations that have recently leased new space in the area are Cisco, Halliburton, Verizon, IBM, Ameritrade and the US Air Force.
Rents in wholesale transactions in the market range from $120 to $150 per kW, plus power and cooling.
The demand is driven by a large amount of corporate headquarters, large talent pool, vast fiber-optic network infrastructure, favorable regulatory environment and low construction costs, which Bellinger said can sometimes be as much as 30 percent lower than the national average.
Power in the Dallas area is relatively expensive, selling for about $0.08 per kWh and is expected to rise in the near future. The DFW market has one of the highest power prices in the state, second only to Houston, where utilities charge about $0.09 per kWh.
Still, Bellinger said, average power prices in the state overall are lower than the national average. That is despite Texas' consuming more power than any other state in the US.
Related news: CyrusOne secures $150 million for data center expansion
Related news: Demand for data center space in the US outpaces supply threefold
Related feature: The confidence of the colocation market
Keywords: Dallas data center, data center supply, Dallas-Fort Worth market, Texas data center, Texas power prices | | 
