Ada County, Idaho

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

Undisclosed Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Key takeaways

Ada County has 508,052 residents and includes Boise. Meta's announced campus is in Kuna, a south-Ada town that sits on Idaho Power's territory along with the rest of the county.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003 + data/sites/data_centers.csv
Idaho Power's residential rate rose 7.8% (10.9 to 11.8 cents per kWh) between 2021 and 2023 on 525,751 in-state residential customers. That is the steepest residential rate move in the Mountain West outside Cheyenne.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Idaho Power Co, ID)
Median household income in Ada County is $88,907 and 43.9% of adults hold a bachelor's degree. The median home value is $476,000, the highest in this batch and a structural barrier to in-migration even before campus construction starts.Source: Census ACS 2023 B19013, B15003, B25077 (Ada County, ID)
Home prices rose only 1.6% on a 3-year baseline, the smallest delta in this batch except for Maricopa. The Boise market has cooled sharply from the 2020 to 2022 in-migration peak.Source: data/cache/realestate_yoy.csv (FIPS 16001)

5.5% of Ada County residents moved in from a different state in the last year, the highest in-migration rate in this 16-county batch. Meta's Kuna campus lands in the host county with the most actively churning population, which is also why the Idaho Power rate pass-through politically lands fastest.Source: Census ACS 2023 B07001_001E, B07001_065E (Ada County, ID)
9.5% of Ada residents are Hispanic of any race and 6.0% are foreign-born, the highest Hispanic share in the Mountain West group. The Boise demographic profile is closer to the Salt Lake metro than to the rural-Idaho counties around it.Source: Census ACS 2023 B03003_001E, B03003_003E, B05002_001E, B05002_013E (Ada County, ID)
8.0% of Ada adults are veterans against a 3.1% unemployment rate, the second-lowest unemployment in this batch after Dallas Iowa. Meta arrives in a labor market that is already tight before the data-center construction phase begins.Source: Census ACS 2023 B21001_001E, B21001_002E, B23025_002E, B23025_005E (Ada County, ID)
Broadband at home reaches 94.4% of Ada households, the highest in this batch. The customer base for the workloads the Kuna campus will host is the most online residential population among the 16 AI host counties.Source: Census ACS 2023 B28002_001E, B28002_004E (Ada County, ID)