Richland County, Louisiana

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

2.0 GW Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Key takeaways

Richland Parish has 19,908 residents and a median household income of $52,960, the lowest of any top-10 AI county. Meta's Hyperion campus will draw up to 5 GW at full buildout, roughly 250 kW per resident.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003, B19013 + sources[0] (Wikipedia: Hyperion data center)
Meta is spending $10 billion on Hyperion on a 2,250-acre former-farmland parcel outside Rayville, a town of 3,297 people. The parish was originally named for the productivity of its cotton and soybean fields.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: Hyperion data center) + Census ACS 2023 B01003 (Rayville town)
Entergy Louisiana's residential rate actually fell 4.2% from 2021 to 2023, the only top-10 AI county where bills went down on a 3-year baseline. The state PSC has not yet ruled on how Hyperion's load will affect that trajectory.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Entergy Louisiana LLC, LA)
Richland's property tax assessments rose 10.3% over three years, sharper than its near-zero population growth would predict. The Hyperion ITEP application is the explicit driver.Source: data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 22083)

23.5% of Richland Parish residents live below the federal poverty line, the highest poverty rate of any top-10 AI host county. Meta's $10 billion Hyperion campus will rise on land where roughly 1 in 4 neighbors already lives below poverty.Source: Census ACS 2023 B17001 (FIPS 22083)
Richland Parish is 36.1% Black, 60.6% white, with only 434 Hispanic residents and zero Asian residents in the 2023 ACS sample. Hyperion lands in one of the few US AI campuses sited in a majority-non-white Black Belt parish.Source: Census ACS 2023 B02001, B03003 (FIPS 22083)
Only 68.0% of Richland households have a wired broadband subscription at home, the lowest of any county in this batch. The Hyperion campus will sit on a fiber backbone its neighbors cannot afford to plug into.Source: Census ACS 2023 B28002 (FIPS 22083)
Median gross rent in Richland is $836 a month, less than half of Union NJ ($1,664) and Dakota MN ($1,497). A 33.0% renter share with rents this low means a small dollar increase from Hyperion spillover can move a much larger share of household budgets.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25064, B25003 (FIPS 22083)