I'm ashamed to admit that despite the fact I've acquired/built a number of industrial buildings throughout my career, I have at best a layman's understanding of electrical systems. There is pretty limited information online, so I wanted to throw this out to the group - does anyone have a good understanding of these system, and what different power capacities mean for an industrial building? For example, what is the minimum power that your average manufacturer would need?
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25 Watts/sqm for logistics operators usually does the job - 100% LED lightning is important
Then for manufacturers or activities involving heavy machinery / heavy automation / hundreds of employees - I usually assume 150 W/sqm but end users will normally give a target in terms of MWs. 4-8 MW total, depends a lot on the industry and the use
Please convert numbers to sf
Lol just throw it into to google and make the conversation.
1 sqm roughly equals 10.76 sf, so for a rough conversion it's just moving the decimal place over. 25 W/sqm = 2.5 W/sf.
What about 110 vs 220 vs 440 volt power?
There's so much variance between power needs for individual manufacturers (and other users for that matter), but a basic rule of thumb I'm working off for new buildings is 1 amp per 100 SF of space. If I was targeting a manufacturing use solely I would probably double that, but I think that would be pretty foolish in the spec development world. At the end of the day, any high-power requirement user is going to be based on a discussion with the local power provider to try and meet their need.
Beyond that, I've spent a lot of time that last few months learning more about electrical systems because of how much of an issue its been for the industrial development business as a whole. Happy to answer any other questions, if I'm able with my relatively limited knowledge base.
where do you learn about all the specifics about what is important in industrial?
i see so many different types of industrial deals in across all markets. some are newer vintage lease-up deals, some are older vintage mark-to-market plays.
how do you know when clear heights matter, what makes for a good truck court depths, when a cross-dock makes sense, when it's okay if something is front-load or rear-load, power, lighting, column spacing, etc. i feel like there are so many specific nuances to industrial and i'm curious how you can quickly identify when this all matters in various markets.
You learn these things by doing and spending time speaking with owners, developers, brokers, users, etc. Its a somewhat niche industry but once you are in it, none of it is that complex.
There is no silver bullet here or perfect method, but talking to brokers on what is leasing up/ what types of tenants are in the market is the best first step. Some markets have users w/ heavier power needs (more manufacturing or light manufacturing) while others might be a 3pl just moving Chinese plastic junk and need a small office and some FL chargers and you are good to go. Also, from my (albeit short) experience, lots of users will way over-estimate what they really need. Its smart to get a power study done on their previously occupied space which should only be a grand or two from any decent commercial electrician and can verify how many amps they consume at peak capacity.
As well, it can go really deep on how much power a user actually needs, vs what distribution infrastructure they need in their building...I've spent way too much time on the phone with electricians/ talking to ChatGPT on this topic but its complex and potentially worth understanding if you are in the industrial development game.
Ultimately my answer to your general question: it depends on who you think your end user is.
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