Berkeley County, South Carolina

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

Undisclosed Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Google

Resi rate Δ (Berkeley Electric Cooperative)

+9.6%

Home price Δ (3y)

+6.0%

Property tax Δ (3y)

+10.7%

Population (2024 ACS)

247K

Median HH income (2024 ACS)

$84,358

Key takeaways

Berkeley County grew 29.2% from 2010 to 2020 and now has 246,802 residents, the fastest growth in any batch-4 county. Google has anchored Mount Holly since 2007 and announced $9 billion through 2027 to expand the Berkeley campus plus two new Dorchester County sites.Source: Census ACS 2024 B01003 + sources[1] (Google datacenters)
Berkeley Electric Cooperative serves 115,117 residential members and is the only batch-4 utility that is a rural electric cooperative. Its residential rate rose 9.6% from 2021 to 2023, about $137 per year on a typical bill.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Berkeley Electric Coop Inc, SC)
Property tax assessments rose 10.7% over three years against a county median income of $84,358 and a 56.2% combined Black and Hispanic share. Google signed a 225 MW renewable PPA in South Carolina in 2023 to offset the campus expansion.Source: data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 45015) + Census ACS 2024 B19013 + sources[1]
Volvo Cars, Nucor, and Booz Allen Hamilton are already in Berkeley's top employer list, and over 900 Google jobs sit across the three SC campuses. The 31.0% bachelor's share is mid-pack for a county anchoring a $9 billion hyperscaler buildout.Source: Census ACS 2024 B15003 + sources[0] (Wikipedia: Berkeley County)

Berkeley County is 23.2% Black and 8.9% Hispanic, the deepest combined non-white share of any batch-3 county outside Franklin OH. The Mount Holly Google campus sits in a Lowcountry corridor where the Gullah Geechee population has anchored Berkeley's coastal demographics for three centuries.Source: Census ACS 2023 B02001 and B03003 (Berkeley County, SC)
12.5% of Berkeley adults are veterans (21,799 veterans), the highest veteran share of any AI county on the East Coast. Joint Base Charleston's labor spillover gives Google the deepest operations-and-maintenance recruitment pool in the Southeast.Source: Census ACS 2023 B21001 (Berkeley County, SC)
Manufacturing employs 13.2% of Berkeley's workforce (14,922 jobs), reflecting the Volvo, Boeing 787, and Nucor footprints already in the Lowcountry industrial belt. Google's $9 billion buildout layers AI capacity on top of an existing heavy-manufacturing labor base rather than into a deindustrialized one.Source: Census ACS 2023 C24050 (Berkeley County, SC)
Median gross rent in Berkeley County is $1,518, well above the SC state average and second only to Washington County OR among batch-3 sites. The Charleston spillover means the same renter base that powers AI campus operations is paying near-coastal rents on a Lowcountry wage.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25064 (Berkeley County, SC)