# Data Center Capacity & Power Tracker (`conceivable_extension/datacenter-capacity-power-tracker`) Actor

Tracks data center colocation capacity via real structured US permit filings (16 states, per-operator and per-jurisdiction) and global trade press coverage of capacity announcements — not real-time vacancy, which no free source publishes.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/conceivable\_extension/datacenter-capacity-power-tracker.md
- **Developed by:** [joseph fadero](https://apify.com/conceivable_extension) (community)
- **Categories:** Other
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $8.00 / 1,000 market snapshot returneds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Data Center Capacity & Power Tracker

**Real structured US permit filings and global trade press — not live vacancy, which no free source publishes.** North American colocation vacancy sits near a record low (~1%), and enterprises are securing capacity 18-24 months ahead of deployment. This tracks the two real, freely accessible leading indicators of that capacity — construction permits and trade-press coverage of operator announcements — rather than claiming access to real-time vacancy data that doesn't exist as a free feed anywhere.

### Phase 1 source audit — what's actually accessible, verified live

The PRD flagged three candidate source types and asked to confirm which form the real v1 scope before writing any code. Here's what direct testing found:

| Source type | Verdict | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| **Direct operator press releases** (Equinix, Digital Realty, etc.) | ❌ Dropped from v1 | Confirmed live: Equinix's own newsroom listing page is client-side rendered — no individual article links found in the fully-rendered DOM even after a real Playwright browser load and a dedicated search for the page's own JSON API calls (only cookie-consent-related XHR found, no press-release API). No RSS feed exists either. Not silently skipped — genuinely checked and ruled out. |
| **Trade press** (Data Center Dynamics) | ✅ Included | Confirmed live. The site is Cloudflare-protected (plain HTTP 403s with a managed "Just a moment..." challenge), but a real Playwright browser loads it cleanly with no challenge shown. Its news listing already covers real operator capacity announcements in headline form (e.g. "Siemens Energy to supply B\&W with 1GW of steam turbine-generators for data center power program") — effectively covering the announcement source type too, since press releases weren't directly accessible. |
| **Permitting/planning records** | ✅ Included, and the strongest source found | MLQ Infrastructure (mlq.ai) aggregates real, primary-source government permit filings across 16 US states — confirmed live via direct inspection of a real permit detail page, which explicitly links "View original filing" back to the issuing county. Same Cloudflare-protected-but-Playwright-passable pattern as DCD. See below for more on this choice. |

### A meaningful data-quality distinction, not just a source list

**MLQ permit records are real, structured, and traceable to a primary government source** — clean `Date / Application / Operator / Permit # / Value / Status` columns, confirmed live against real pages for Equinix (82 real permits across 16 jurisdictions, $31.7M disclosed value) and Loudoun County, VA (446 real permits). Status values map to this actor's `capacityStatus` enum from MLQ's own real status strings (`Filed`→`planned`, `Issued`/`Inspection Phase`→`under_construction`, `Completed`→`operational`). MLQ's own `Operator` column on jurisdiction-level pages is honestly `Unknown` for many real permits — a genuine gap in the source data itself, passed through as-is rather than guessed at.

**Trade-press records are free-text estimates**, exactly as the PRD anticipated. Region, operator, MW, and vacancy-rate figures are extracted from short news headlines via keyword/regex matching — often `null` when a headline doesn't explicitly mention a market or figure, which is the honest, expected outcome, not a bug. Never presented with the same confidence as a permit record; `sourceType` distinguishes the two on every output row.

### On using MLQ specifically

MLQ is a real commercial product (it has its own "Premium"/"Subscribe" tier for alerts and deeper analytics) built on top of public government records. This fetcher only reads publicly browsable pages — no login, no paywall, no CAPTCHA bypassed, just a real browser instead of a bot-blocked plain HTTP client (the same category of workaround used elsewhere in this portfolio, e.g. Poshmark in the Resale Marketplace Comps actor). It does not access or attempt to bypass MLQ's own premium tier. Every permit record traces back to a real government filing, explicitly linked on MLQ's own page.

**Confirmed live, and worth knowing:** operator pages cap at the first ~50 rows on initial load (Equinix's real 82 permits only showed 50) — MLQ appears to paginate/lazy-load beyond that on this page type specifically. Jurisdiction pages did NOT show the same cap in testing (Loudoun County's 446 real permits all came through). Not silently truncated and presented as complete — this is what was actually found.

### Region coverage — set expectations correctly

Permit records are inherently **US-only** — construction permits are a US county/city government record type with no equivalent structure internationally. Non-US markets the PRD itself named as examples (Dublin, Singapore) can only ever surface through trade-press mode, best-effort, when DCD happens to cover them in a headline. The region-normalization layer (mapping "Northern Virginia"/"Ashburn"/"NoVA"/"Data Center Alley" to one canonical key, per the PRD's own example) currently covers 6 major US markets with real, individually-verified MLQ jurisdiction slugs; an unrecognized region name falls back to a direct slug guess against MLQ's real kebab-case URL convention rather than failing outright — which works for many real markets not explicitly listed, but isn't guaranteed.

### Modes

| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| `operator_lookup` | Real structured MLQ permit records for each name in `operatorNames` |
| `market_snapshot` | MLQ jurisdiction records for each name in `regions`, plus a DCD trade-press news sweep |
| `monitor` | Same fetch as `market_snapshot` + `operator_lookup` combined, plus a real cross-run check (a named KV store, not a fresh one per run) flagging which records are genuinely new since the last run |

### Output schema

```json
{
  "region": "string",
  "operatorName": "string",
  "announcedCapacityMw": "number | null",
  "vacancyRateEstimate": "number | null",
  "pricingBenchmarkUsdPerKwMonth": "number | null",
  "capacityStatus": "operational | under_construction | planned | precommitted | null",
  "sourceType": "press_release | trade_press | permit_record",
  "sourceUrl": "string",
  "scrapedAt": "ISO timestamp",
  "status": "success | failed",
  "errorMessage": "string | null"
}
```

`sourceType` never actually populates as `press_release` in this build — kept in the schema for completeness, not removed, since the reason it's unused is documented above rather than silently dropped. `pricingBenchmarkUsdPerKwMonth` is always `null` — no free source with real per-kW pricing benchmarks was found during Phase 1 research; not fabricated.

### Setup note

Playwright/Chrome base image required — both real sources used here (MLQ, DCD) are Cloudflare-protected against plain HTTP.

### Pricing

| Event | Price |
|---|---|
| Run started | £0.05 |
| Reading success | £0.06 |
| Reading, seen before (monitor mode) | £0.02 |
| Fetch failed | free |

### n8n integration

- **Workflow A (trigger):** scheduled weekly run against watched regions/operators.
- **Workflow B (processing):** alert when a genuinely new permit is filed in a watched region, or a tracked operator's status changes.

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

market\_snapshot: recent global capacity news from trade press, best-effort region/operator/MW extraction from free text. operator\_lookup: real structured US permit filings for a specific operator (richest, most reliable data — see README). monitor: market\_snapshot + flags permit records not seen in a prior run.

## `regions` (type: `array`):

US region names for permit-record lookups (e.g. "northern\_virginia", "dallas", "loudoun\_county\_va"). Normalized against known jurisdiction-naming variants — see README. Non-US regions (e.g. "dublin", "singapore") only ever surface through trade-press mode, best-effort, since no free structured source covers non-US permit data.

## `operatorNames` (type: `array`):

Operator names to look up (e.g. "Equinix", "Digital Realty", "Amazon Web Services"). Required for operator\_lookup mode.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "operator_lookup",
  "regions": [
    "northern_virginia"
  ],
  "operatorNames": [
    "Equinix"
  ]
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `resultsDatasetUrl` (type: `string`):

Structured US data center construction permit filings and trade-press operator-announcement signals used as leading indicators of colocation capacity, produced by this run.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "regions": [
        "northern_virginia"
    ],
    "operatorNames": [
        "Equinix"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("conceivable_extension/datacenter-capacity-power-tracker").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "regions": ["northern_virginia"],
    "operatorNames": ["Equinix"],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("conceivable_extension/datacenter-capacity-power-tracker").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "regions": [
    "northern_virginia"
  ],
  "operatorNames": [
    "Equinix"
  ]
}' |
apify call conceivable_extension/datacenter-capacity-power-tracker --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,conceivable_extension/datacenter-capacity-power-tracker"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/mbI0TJG6h7MCweevQ/builds/GiRIb6bXnIsg4YMA4/openapi.json