Microsoft Fairwater Atlanta / QTS Fayetteville Campus

Capacity: announced vs energized

Announced-to-energized gap: 1.16 GW. Every figure below is a single dated, sourced claim. Current best per series resolves by evidence tier, then date. See the methodology.

Promised online: 2026. Energized capacity is now on record. Claimed by Microsoft / reporting (source).

Key facts

On the data center map

Every tracked data center is on this map, centered on Microsoft Fairwater Atlanta / QTS Fayetteville Campus. Pan or zoom out to see how close rivals are building.

Approximate pin. We hold a city-level coordinate for this campus, not a verified site coordinate, so the marker shows the city rather than the parcel. The satellite strip and building outlines stay off until the site coordinate is sourced.

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The deal

utility

Georgia Power / Southern Company · Ashley Park 500/230-kV substation

operator

Microsoft · Fairwater buildings

developer

QTS Data Centers · campus developer, Blackstone-owned

chip supplier

NVIDIA · GPU supplier (GB200/GB300 Blackwell).

financier

Blackstone · Owner of QTS (Blackstone-backed).

land owner

Fayette County Development Authority · Land seller (~$154M, 2022) and incentive grantor.

tenant

OpenAI · Named customer/tenant of the site (Microsoft newsroom).

Power

Power source

grid

Grid operator

other

Interconnection

Grid connected, and deliberately grid-only: the Fairwater design strips on-site generation, UPS and dual-corded distribution out of the building entirely and treats the grid itself as the resiliency layer. Serving it took a new Ashley Park 500/230 kV substation with two autotransformers and two new 230 kV lines into the customer substations. Georgia Power treats those costs as trade secrets, so the roughly $158 million figure in circulation is an outside estimate, not a utility disclosure. Georgia Power has told regulators the wider campus approaches 1,500 MW at full build-out.

Water

Closed-loop liquid cooling consuming almost zero water; initial fill equivalent to what 20 homes use in a year, no evaporation, ~6-year loop life (Microsoft). Grid-only, no on-site generation and no UPS/gen-sets.

Georgia Power Ashley Park substation + 500 kV line, grid, Under construction. $158M Georgia Power Ashley Park 500/230 kV substation plus 500 kV Ashley Park-Wansley line to serve the campus; grid infrastructure, not on-site generation.

County water status: Moderate drought (D1) in Fayette County, week of 2026-09-22 (US Drought Monitor). Data centers are large water users for cooling; this is the neutral local water picture.

Why here

Microsoft Fairwater Atlanta / QTS Fayetteville Campus sits on greenfield in Georgia, Fayetteville. It connects to the other grid, draws on grid power, interconnection is Grid connected, and deliberately grid-only: the Fairwater design strips on-site generation, UPS and dual-corded distribution out of the building entirely and treats the grid itself as the resiliency layer. Serving it took a new Ashley Park 500/230 kV substation with two autotransformers and two new 230 kV lines into the customer substations. Georgia Power treats those costs as trade secrets, so the roughly $158 million figure in circulation is an outside estimate, not a utility disclosure. Georgia Power has told regulators the wider campus approaches 1,500 MW at full build-out.. This siting summary is composed from the record's held fields, not speculation; see methodology.

Financial structure

QTS green bond tied to Fayetteville campus

$4.6B. ~$4.6B 10-year investment-grade green bond (April 2026). journalist report ↗

Fayette County Development Authority abatement

Ramp schedule: facility pays 10% of tax bill in year 1, +10%/yr, reaching 100% at 10 years; no total dollar cap disclosed. journalist report ↗

Cost of the Ashley Park 500/230 kV substation built to serve the campus

$158M. Utility-side build: substation, two autotransformers and two new 230 kV lines into the customer substations. Georgia Power treats the cost as a trade secret, so this figure is an outside estimate rather than a utility disclosure. journalist report ↗

QTS planned campus investment

up to $1B. Characterized as 'up to $1 billion' / 'billions'. tracker ↗

QTS campus land purchase

$154M. QTS bought the ~615-acre campus from the Fayette County Development Authority (Aug 2022). journalist report ↗

Regulatory paper trail

The filings and rules on record for this site and its jurisdiction, most recent first. Each is a sourced, dated artifact you can follow to the primary document.

Investment, workforce and specs

Cooling

Closed-loop direct-to-chip liquid cooling source ↗

GPUs

>150,000 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs (Fairwater 1) source ↗

Permanent jobs

Dozens of technicians (no hard number disclosed) source ↗

Estimated compute: the claimed >150,000 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs (Fairwater 1) chips are on the order of 90x the compute used to train a GPT-4-class model. Derived from the chip-count claim, not measured (basis).

Facilities at this campus

• Fayettevillehyperscale
• QTS Fayetteville Data Center Campushyperscale

Timeline

1. Show 15 earlier updates
2. Aug 2026
   financial recorded
   transmission_build: Cost of the Ashley Park 500/230 kV substation built to serve the campus
3. Sep 2026
   Current: Partially energized

Sources

• Microsoft Fairwater Atlanta: A Grid-Only Gigawatt AI Data Center ↗
• QTS Plans World's Largest Data Center Campus in Fayetteville ↗
• Microsoft launches Atlanta Fairwater data center: two stories, no UPS or gen-sets ↗ · Data Center Dynamics

ee24a4c1-dad9-4591-8bc2-dadbd2f88ba7 · Tracked with DEPLOY's verified-vs-claimed methodology. Every term is defined in the glossary. Announced numbers are claims, not built capacity.

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