Trampoline Park Electricity: 12.1 kWh a Sq Ft, Three Levers
United States public assembly buildings consumed 12.1 kWh of site electricity per square foot in the 2018 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. That is 130 kWh per square meter, and it is the closest thing to a free benchmark a trampoline park investor can reach.
Applied to a 31,512 sq ft (2,928 m²) park with 73 open hours a week, it yields 381,295 kWh a year. At the August 2026 Texas commercial average of 8.96 cents that is $34,164. At the California average of 30.02 cents it is $114,465.
Nothing about the building changed between those two figures. That is the first lesson of this exercise: in a park with fixed intensity, the state decides more of the bill than the design does.
Three levers move the number after that, and each one is settled before the equipment list is written: the fuel you heat with, the hours you stay open, and the peak you draw.
The sections below give the base number, the conversion, and the arithmetic for all three levers. Where the data stops, we say so rather than filling the gap.
1. The only public benchmark, and what it actually measures
The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey is a quadrennial sample survey run by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The 2018 cycle covers 5.6 million commercial buildings and 94.8 billion sq ft of floorspace. Its tables were published in December 2022.
Public assembly is the category that comes closest to a trampoline park. It covers buildings where people gather for social or recreational activity, from meeting halls to gyms, and it holds about 488,000 buildings across 7.2 billion sq ft. Mean electricity intensity is 12.1 kWh per square foot. The median is 8.2.
That gap between mean and median matters more than the mean itself. Half of the buildings in the category sit below 8.2 kWh per square foot, and a minority of heavy users pull the average up. Roughly 68% of public assembly buildings are smaller than 10,000 sq ft, and the category average is 14,700 sq ft per building. A 31,000 sq ft park open 73 hours a week is not the typical member of the sample.
The two closest subcategories are Recreation at 13.0 kWh per square foot and Entertainment or culture at 13.2. Both sit above the category average.
| Building activity, 2018 CBECS | Buildings (thousands) | Mean kWh per sq ft | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All commercial buildings | 5,613 | 12.6 | 8.6 | 15.8 |
| Public assembly | 488 | 12.1 | 8.2 | 14.9 |
| Recreation (public assembly subgroup) | 152 | 13.0 | 8.7 | 16.6 |
| Entertainment or culture (subgroup) | 71 | 13.2 | 4.6 | 12.5 |
| Office | 970 | 13.6 | 10.1 | 15.7 |
Read the last two columns before you read the third. A park at the 75th percentile of public assembly uses 14.9 kWh per square foot, which is 23% above the mean and 82% above the median. The benchmark is a distribution, not a specification.
2. Two EIA tables that agree with each other
The same survey publishes a second cut of the same buildings. Public assembly buildings used 583 trillion Btu in 2018, of which 298 trillion Btu was electricity. That is 51.1% of category energy.
The electricity table gives the same share from the other direction. Take 12.1 kWh per square foot and convert at 3,412 Btu per kWh. The result is 41,285 Btu, or 41.3 thousand Btu, against a published mean energy intensity of 81.1 thousand Btu per square foot for the category. That is 50.9%.
Two separately compiled tables landing within 0.2 percentage points is a useful check. It means the electricity figure is internally consistent and that no hidden fuel is folded into it. You can use 12.1 kWh as a base without adjusting for something the survey quietly included.
The same source names the largest single end use: space heating, at 41.4 thousand Btu per square foot among buildings that heat with a major fuel, and 48% of all consumption in the category. Natural gas supplied 216 trillion Btu against 298 trillion Btu of electricity, so the heating load in these buildings sits mostly on the gas meter.
That is where the first lever comes from. If the box you lease has no gas service, the largest end use in the benchmark moves onto your electricity bill, and the benchmark stops describing your building.
3. What the data does and does not show
What it shows Site electricity per square foot, by building activity, across a national sample, with a distribution. It also shows the split between electricity and gas in the same buildings, which is what lets you test whether a benchmark applies to you.
What it does not show A trampoline park. The category has no row for trampolines, airbags, ninja courses or multi-level play frames. Recreation and Entertainment or culture are the nearest rows, and neither is a match. We use the public assembly mean because it is the broadest defensible base, not because it is precise.
The vintage is 2018 and the tables were released in 2022. Lighting efficiency has improved since the survey period, and commercial LED retrofits have continued. We have not adjusted the intensity downward for that, because we cannot put a defensible figure on the adjustment. Treat 12.1 as a base that may run slightly high on lighting and roughly right on everything else.
The survey measures consumption, not bills. A kWh figure excludes demand charges, customer charges, riders, taxes and power-factor penalties. In the two tariffs we examine in section 7, the demand line alone runs between 10% and 35% of the energy line for the same building.
The 12.1 figure is a conditional intensity, calculated across buildings that use electricity at all. That is the right denominator for a park, but it is not comparable with an all-buildings intensity that includes vacant structures.
Our price table is a single month. August 2026 commercial averages reflect summer cooling load and summer capacity costs, and they sit above or below the annual average depending on the state. The year-over-year column still shows direction, but a single month is a snapshot.
State averages blend every commercial customer class, from a 900 sq ft salon to a hospital. Your tariff will differ, sometimes by more than the gap between two states. The averages rank markets; they do not quote a rate.
We have not modeled your building. Envelope, glazing ratio, ceiling height, dehumidification strategy, kitchen equipment and air changes per hour all move the result, and none of them appear in a public dataset. The build-up below is a range with stated assumptions, not a simulation.
No trampoline park operator publishes its electricity bill. We looked, and we are not going to invent one. Everything below the survey line is arithmetic on published inputs, and it is labelled that way wherever it appears.
The load build-up, as a range Four components account for most of the electricity in a park, and each can be estimated from a design figure rather than a meter reading. At 73 open hours a week, lighting at 0.4 to 0.7 W per square foot comes to 1.5 to 2.7 kWh per square foot a year. Supply and exhaust fans at 0.5 to 0.9 W per square foot come to 1.9 to 3.4. Cooling outdoor air at 0.10 to 0.30 cfm per square foot, with a 15 °F temperature difference and 30 grains of moisture difference at a coefficient of performance of 3.5, comes to 0.7 to 2.0. Internal gains from jumpers and plug loads add another 1.5 to 3.5. The four together land between 5.6 and 11.6 kWh per square foot, and the remaining gap to 12.1 is envelope conduction, water heating and kitchen equipment.
That band is the honest answer to whether the benchmark applies to you. It does, for a gas-heated building open about 70 hours a week in a mixed climate. It stops applying the moment the heating moves onto the electricity meter, which is exactly what section 5 prices.
4. From kWh to dollars: the same building in ten states
The price table is the August 2026 average price of electricity to commercial customers, by state, from the Electric Power Monthly. The national average was 14.47 cents per kWh, up 0.60 cents from August 2025.
| State | Commercial price, Aug 2026 (cents per kWh) | Aug 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. average | 14.47 | 13.87 | +0.60 |
| Texas | 8.96 | 8.76 | +0.20 |
| Florida | 11.35 | 11.43 | −0.08 |
| Ohio | 12.31 | 11.42 | +0.89 |
| Tennessee | 13.13 | 12.86 | +0.27 |
| Georgia | 13.81 | 11.16 | +2.65 |
| Pennsylvania | 13.93 | 12.68 | +1.25 |
| Illinois | 14.67 | 13.94 | +0.73 |
| New Jersey | 18.71 | 18.52 | +0.19 |
| New York | 23.06 | 22.33 | +0.73 |
| Massachusetts | 24.11 | 23.15 | +0.96 |
| California | 30.02 | 29.24 | +0.78 |
Multiply the reference box by each price and the spread becomes concrete. The arithmetic, once, in full: 31,512 sq ft × 12.1 kWh per sq ft = 381,295 kWh a year. Multiply by $0.0896 and the Texas energy charge is $34,164, which is $1.08 per square foot, $9.00 per open hour across 3,796 hours, and $0.54 per admission at two visits per square foot.
Repeat that for each state and the ranking is identical to the price ranking, because the kWh total is fixed. This is what a pure price comparison looks like before any building decision enters it.
| State | Annual energy charge | Per sq ft | Per open hour | Per admission | Share of a $20 ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $34,164 | $1.08 | $9.00 | $0.54 | 2.7% |
| Florida | $43,277 | $1.37 | $11.40 | $0.69 | 3.4% |
| Ohio | $46,937 | $1.49 | $12.36 | $0.74 | 3.7% |
| Tennessee | $50,064 | $1.59 | $13.19 | $0.79 | 4.0% |
| Georgia | $52,657 | $1.67 | $13.87 | $0.84 | 4.2% |
| Illinois | $55,936 | $1.78 | $14.74 | $0.89 | 4.4% |
| New Jersey | $71,340 | $2.26 | $18.79 | $1.13 | 5.7% |
| New York | $87,927 | $2.79 | $23.16 | $1.40 | 7.0% |
| Massachusetts | $91,930 | $2.92 | $24.22 | $1.46 | 7.3% |
| California | $114,465 | $3.63 | $30.15 | $1.82 | 9.1% |
Two visits per square foot is the only assumption in that table. It serves one purpose: it converts a fixed annual cost into a per-guest figure so you can compare it with a ticket price. If your park runs at one visit per square foot, every per-admission figure doubles.
The comparison that matters for a pro forma sits next to this one. We worked through the rent line in Trampoline Park Rent: What $24.79 a Sq Ft Actually Costs, and the labor line in Trampoline Park Labor Cost: The 4 a Sq Ft Nobody Budgets. Electricity is the smallest of the three in every state we priced, and unlike rent it is the one you can still influence after the lease is signed.
5. Lever one: the fuel behind the meter
Space heating is 41.4 thousand Btu per square foot in this building category, and 48% of category consumption. What that costs depends entirely on what you burn.
The gas case first. At 80% annual fuel utilization efficiency, 41,400 Btu of delivered heat needs 51,750 Btu of fuel, which is 0.0517 million Btu per square foot. Commercial gas averaged $10.98 per thousand cubic feet in 2025. At 1.037 million Btu per thousand cubic feet, that is $10.59 per million Btu, so the heating gas costs $0.55 per square foot a year, or $17,270 for the reference box.
The heat pump case. The same 41,400 Btu of heat at a coefficient of performance of 3.0 needs 4.04 kWh per square foot, because 41,400 ÷ 3,412 ÷ 3.0 = 4.04. That is $0.36 per square foot in Texas and $0.98 in Massachusetts.
The resistance case. At a coefficient of performance of 1.0 the same heat needs 12.13 kWh per square foot. That is the full electricity intensity of the benchmark again, added on top of it, and it takes the building to 24.2 kWh per square foot.
| Heating option | Energy per sq ft | Cost per sq ft, Texas prices | Cost per sq ft, Massachusetts prices | Annual, 31,512 sq ft, Texas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gas, 80% AFUE | 0.052 million Btu | $0.55 | $0.55 | $17,270 |
| Heat pump, COP 3.0 | 4.04 kWh | $0.36 | $0.98 | $11,407 |
| Resistance, COP 1.0 | 12.13 kWh | $1.09 | $2.93 | $34,251 |
Gas costs the same in both market columns because that figure is a national average rather than a state one.
In Texas, a heat pump beats gas on running cost. In Massachusetts, gas beats a heat pump by a wide margin. Same equipment schedule, opposite answer, because the two meters are priced differently.
The practical consequence is a due diligence question rather than a design question. Ask whether the box has a gas service and what its capacity is before you sign. Strip-center units without gas are common, and a landlord who will not extend a service turns a heating decision into a 12 kWh per square foot adder for the life of the lease.
If gas is unavailable, specify a heat pump rather than resistance heat. The difference in Massachusetts is $2.93 against $0.98 per square foot, which is $61,000 a year on this floor area. No package of LED lighting and occupancy sensors recovers that gap.
6. Lever two: hours, and why the last hour costs less
The benchmark is calculated across buildings with a wide range of opening hours, and intensity scales with them. Lighting, supply fans and cooling all run while the doors are open. Plug loads, controls, dehumidification and standby draw run whether anyone is jumping or not.
Split the 12.1 kWh per square foot into a fixed block and an hour-driven block and the behaviour becomes easy to see. We use 4.0 kWh per square foot as the fixed block and 8.1 as the hour-driven block, calibrated so the two sum to 12.1 at 73 open hours a week, which is the posted schedule at Altitude’s Arlington park in Texas.
That calibration gives a marginal cost per open hour. Divide 8.1 kWh per square foot by 3,796 open hours and multiply by 31,512 sq ft: 67.2 kWh for each additional hour the doors stay open. At Texas prices that is $6.02. At Massachusetts prices it is $16.21.
Compare that with the average hour. Total consumption is 381,295 kWh ÷ 3,796 hours = 100.4 kWh, or $9.00 in Texas and $24.22 in Massachusetts. The marginal hour is roughly two thirds of the average hour, because the fixed block is already paid for.
| Open hours per week | Open hours per year | kWh per sq ft | Annual charge, Texas | Annual charge, Massachusetts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55 | 2,860 | 10.1 | $28,525 | $76,756 |
| 65 | 3,380 | 11.2 | $31,658 | $85,186 |
| 73 | 3,796 | 12.1 | $34,164 | $91,930 |
| 85 | 4,420 | 13.4 | $37,924 | $102,046 |
This is the arithmetic behind discount sessions. An extra weekday morning hour costs $6.02 of electricity in Texas before it costs anything else. A $9 toddler ticket that fills that hour with twelve children covers the energy several times over, and still has to answer for the monitor on the floor and the rent that accrues whether the lights are on or not.
We looked at how one operator sells exactly those hours in Sky Zone Bronx Hosted City Hall: The Weekday Morning Market. The energy argument is the easy half of that decision, and it is the half most pro formas get wrong in the other direction, by charging average cost against a marginal hour.
One warning sits inside this table. Every added hour also adds fan and cooling hours to a building that may already have a noise problem, and acoustic treatment is a capital cost rather than a utility cost. We covered that trade in Trampoline Park Noise Control: The Empty Hour Is Loudest.
7. Lever three: the demand charge that cents per kWh hides
A commercial bill above roughly 25 kW of peak draw is usually billed in two parts. The energy charge applies to every kWh. The demand charge applies to the highest average kW over a 15 or 30 minute interval in the month, and it applies to that peak once, not per hour.
Two filed tariffs show how far apart the demand line can sit. Jersey Central Power and Light’s general service secondary schedule, effective 1 June 2026, charges $6.81 per kW from June through September and $6.33 per kW from October through May, plus a $64.79 monthly customer charge. Athens Utilities Board in Tennessee, a Tennessee Valley Authority distributor, charges $15.95 per kW in summer and $14.71 in winter for customers between 51 kW and 1,000 kW.
Now put a peak on the reference box. Lighting at 0.55 W per square foot draws about 17 kW. Supply and exhaust fans at 0.8 W per square foot draw about 25 kW. Cooling compressors, airbag blowers, compressors and plug loads add the rest. Connected load lands near 150 kW, and a diversified monthly peak near 95 kW is a reasonable planning figure.
At 95 kW, the demand charge is $601 to $647 a month in New Jersey and $1,397 to $1,515 a month in Tennessee. Across a year, with six months at each seasonal rate, that is $7,490 against $17,476.
| Annual line, 31,512 sq ft at 95 kW peak | New Jersey, JCP&L | Tennessee, Athens Utilities Board |
|---|---|---|
| Energy charge | $71,340 | $50,064 |
| Demand charge | $7,490 | $17,476 |
| Total of the two | $78,840 | $67,539 |
| Total per sq ft | $2.50 | $2.14 |
The ranking narrows. On energy alone, New Jersey is 1.42 times Tennessee. Add the demand line and the gap falls to 1.17 times. A site comparison built only on cents per kWh overstates the difference between those two markets, and would have picked the wrong one if the peaks differed by another 20 kW.
Read the ratchet clause before you model anything. Many tariffs bill the greater of the current month’s peak or a percentage of the highest peak in the previous eleven months. The percentage and the look-back window differ by utility, and quoting one here would be guessing at a contract term you can read in five minutes.
Peak control is cheap relative to the charge. Staggering HVAC start-up so compressors do not all pull at opening, keeping airbag blowers off the same interval as the dehumidifier, and confirming whether the meter bills on 15 or 30 minute intervals are operational changes rather than capital projects. Equipment selection matters too, and the blower and compressor package behind an airbag is where a burst load comes from in the first place.
That is also why the accessory list is worth reading before the equipment list. Items that run continuously belong on a schedule; items that run in bursts belong on a stagger. The range at trampoline park accessories is a reasonable place to mark which is which.
8. Decision rules for a build
None of the above produces a forecast, and this article will not offer one. What it produces is a set of tests you can apply to a specific box in a specific state before a lease is signed.
| If this is true | Then budget or act this way |
|---|---|
| Gas service exists at the box | Heat with gas and budget electricity at 12 kWh per sq ft, not 24 |
| No gas, heat pump specified | Budget 16.1 kWh per sq ft; the heating adder is 4.0 |
| No gas, resistance heat in place | Budget 24.2 kWh per sq ft or renegotiate the box |
| Commercial price above 20 cents | Every kWh of intensity is worth 20 cents; audit lighting and fan power first |
| Demand charge above $12 per kW | Shave peak before replacing lighting; 20 kW is worth about $3,700 a year |
| Open more than 80 hours a week | Add 67 kWh per extra open hour at this floor area, then test the ticket price against it |
| Utilities sit inside CAM charges | Require a submeter and 12 months of bills before signing |
| Seller has no bills and no submeter | Treat 12.1 kWh per sq ft as a floor, never as a budget |
Two of those rules are worth more than the rest. The first is the gas question, because it is the only one that can double the electricity intensity of a building without changing a single piece of play equipment. The second is the submeter, because a park inside a CAM pool has no way to see whether its own peak is being billed at its own rate.
If you are at the design stage, the numbers you can still influence are the ones that set connected load: fan power per cfm, outdoor-air rate, dehumidification strategy and the blower package behind the airbag. The design and delivery process is where those get fixed, usually before anyone models an electricity bill.
9. Summary
Public assembly buildings averaged 12.1 kWh of electricity per square foot in 2018, with a median of 8.2 and a 75th percentile of 14.9. Electricity was 51% of the category’s energy, and the figure is internally consistent with the survey’s Btu tables.
For a 31,512 sq ft park at 73 open hours a week, the benchmark is 381,295 kWh and between $34,164 and $114,465 a year depending on the state, before demand charges. The per-admission share of a $20 ticket runs from 2.7% to 9.1%.
Three levers move it: heating fuel, which can add 4.0 or 12.1 kWh per square foot; hours, at 67 kWh per extra open hour for this floor area; and peak demand, which is 10% to 35% of the energy line in the two tariffs examined here.
The benchmark is a starting point for a conversation with a utility and a landlord, not a line item you can copy into a budget and forget.
If you are comparing two candidate buildings, send the floor area, the ceiling height and the state, and we will return a layout that shows which zones drive your connected load. Written requests go through the contact form.
FAQ
How much electricity does a trampoline park use per square foot?
Plan on 12.1 kWh per square foot a year as a base, which is the 2018 survey average for public assembly buildings. The median in that category is 8.2 and the 75th percentile is 14.9, so the range around the average is wide. The nearest subcategories, Recreation and Entertainment or culture, average 13.0 and 13.2. A 31,512 sq ft park at the average uses about 381,000 kWh a year.
Is electricity a big operating cost for a trampoline park?
It is smaller than rent or labor, and it is large enough to matter. At August 2026 commercial prices the energy charge alone runs from $1.08 per square foot in Texas to $3.63 in California, which is 2.7% to 9.1% of a $20 ticket at two visits per square foot. Demand charges sit on top and add 10% to 35% in the two tariffs we examined.
What is a demand charge and why does it matter more than the kWh price?
A demand charge bills the highest average kW your meter records in a 15 or 30 minute interval during the month, at a rate per kW. JCP&L in New Jersey charges $6.33 to $6.81 per kW in its general service secondary schedule, while Athens Utilities Board in Tennessee charges $14.71 to $15.95 per kW. One short peak sets the charge for the whole month, so a park that starts every compressor at opening can pay more than a park with higher total consumption.
Does an all-electric building cost more to run than a gas-heated one?
It depends on the heating equipment, not on the fuel label. Space heating is 41.4 thousand Btu per square foot in this building category. A heat pump at a coefficient of performance of 3.0 needs 4.04 kWh per square foot to deliver that heat, while resistance heating needs 12.13 kWh. Gas at 80% efficiency costs about $0.55 per square foot, so a heat pump is cheaper in Texas and a gas boiler is cheaper in Massachusetts.
How do I estimate my own electricity budget from these numbers?
Multiply floor area by an intensity of 12.1 kWh per square foot, and add 4.0 if you heat with a heat pump or 12.1 if you heat with resistance. Multiply by your state’s commercial price, then divide by annual open hours to get a cost per hour. Separately, multiply your expected peak kW by the demand rate on your tariff and by twelve. Compare the total with the rent line, not with the revenue line.
Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Table C22. Electricity consumption totals and conditional intensities by building activity subcategories, 2018”, released December 2022. eia.gov
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, “2018 CBECS: Principal Building Activities, Public Assembly”, released December 2022. eia.gov
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A. Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector, by State, August 2026 and 2025”, released 23 October 2026. eia.gov
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Natural Gas Prices, Average Commercial Price, annual data 1967 to 2025”. eia.gov
- New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Jersey Central Power and Light Company electric tariff, Part III general service schedule, effective 1 June 2026, Docket EO18080899. bpu.state.nj.us
- Athens Utilities Board, “Commercial and Industrial Electric Power Rates”, Tennessee Valley Authority distributor schedule, May 2026. aub.org
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, project filing TABS2026013038, Altitude Trampoline Park Arlington, 31,512 sq ft, filed 19 February 2026. tdlr.texas.gov
- Altitude Trampoline Park Arlington, posted park hours and pass prices. altitudearlington.com