Europe is in the middle of a data center boom, and in 2023 we saw record demand for data centers: in the leading European markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin) 114 MW of capacity was commissioned in the second quarter of 2023 alone. That equals roughly the peak electricity demand (residents and businesses) of three cities the size of Pärnu.
The Baltics' largest data center in Hüüru, next to Tallinn. Photo: Tõnu Tunnel.
As of November 2022 there are more than 1,200 data centers in Europe, with a total of 8.3 million square metres of space and 8,300 MW of capacity. The European market is dominated by US companies. The largest service providers are Equinix with 83 locations across Europe and Lumen Technologies with 56 facilities. Germany and the United Kingdom have the most data centers, well over 400 in each. Looking closer to home, Finland has 34 facilities, Latvia 22 and Lithuania 17 (data as of October 2022). But where are the biggest ones?
Greenergy Data Centers
Area: 14,500 m2
Location: Hüüru, Estonia
Operator: Greenergy Data Centers
The largest in Estonia (and the rest of the Baltics), Greenergy Data Centers in Hüüru on the edge of Tallinn, is one of the most secure, reliable and energy-efficient data centers in this region.
The building, which runs on green energy, holds two football pitches' worth of equipment, and the complex's electricity connections could power an average Estonian town. The first completed building has an area of 14,500 square metres, and the complex can be expanded by two more similar buildings.
Telia Helsinki Data Center
Area: 15,000 m2
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Operator: Telia
The Helsinki facility of Telia, which operates in the Nordics and Estonia, offers data center, cloud and infrastructure services to Finnish and international companies and organisations. For that it has nearly 15,000 square metres of floor space. The environmentally friendly data center has 24 MW of IT capacity to show.
LD5 data center
Area: 21,000 m2
Location: Slough, United Kingdom
Operator: Equinix
As mentioned above, Equinix has the most data centers in Europe, but by size none of them even makes the top five of our table. The largest of them, the LD5 data center about an hour's drive from London, with its 21,000 square metres makes up about a quarter of the size of all Equinix's data centers in Europe.
Facebook's Luleå data center
Area: 27,000 m2
Location: Luleå, Sweden
Operator: Facebook
Facebook's 27,000-square-metre facility in Luleå in Swedish Lapland, opened in 2013, is a remarkably efficient site that runs on hydroelectric power. The entire upper floor of the facility acts as a cooling system, meaning it takes in outside air, filters and cools it and redistributes it to the lower floors. The heat generated in the data hall in turn is used in colder weather to warm the outside air to a suitable temperature so it can be reused to cool the servers.
At the time it was Facebook's first data center outside the USA.
Microsoft's Dublin data center
Area: 50,000 m2
Location: Clondalkin, Ireland
Operator: Microsoft
When Microsoft's Dublin data center, costing 500 million dollars (451.3 million euros) and more than 50,000 square metres in size, was launched in 2009, it was one of the first examples of a facility of that scale that could cool thousands of servers almost entirely with outside air. For Microsoft it was the first data center outside the United States. Since then the facility has been expanded several times to meet demand.
Frankfurt 1
Area: 52,000 m2
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Operator: NTT
Germany's largest data center is, for understandable reasons, in the financial capital Frankfurt. Frankfurt 1 has more than 52,000 square metres of "IT space" spread over seven separate buildings. Since Frankfurt is the leader of the German data center market and NTT a leading data center service provider in the market, Frankfurt 1 (and its "successors") were created to offer customers additional space.
NTT Data, which owns the data center, is an international IT services and consulting company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
Facebook's Odense data center
Area: at least 55,000 m2
Location: Odense, Denmark
Operator: Meta
Rumours that Facebook would build a data center in Denmark started circulating in 2016, Data Center Dynamics reported. It was made official a year later, and the first 55,000-square-metre facility went live in 2019. A year later the company announced it would expand the data center by 30,000 square metres. Facebook said at the time that, including the expansion, more than 13 billion Danish kroner, over 1.7 billion euros, had been invested in the Odense data center.
In December 2021 there was again talk of expansion: Meta planned to build two more buildings in the "data campus". In total the floor space would have come to nearly 200,000 square metres.
A year later, however, Meta changed its plans and the large expansion plan was abandoned, Data Center Dynamics reported in December 2022. Reportedly the cables had already been laid and the plans set when Meta terminated the contract with the construction company. Whether the first, 30,000-square-metre expansion was already complete by then is not entirely clear, but what is certain is that the Odense data center deserves a mention even with its original 55,000 square metres.
It is also worth mentioning that the Odense facility is connected to the local heating network, so the heat left over from running the servers is used to heat homes in the area. We have written before on the blog about how the heat generated in a data center can be used.
Vantage Cardiff data center campus, CWL1
Area: 70,000 m2
Location: Newport, Wales
Operator: Vantage Data Centers
Among the largest is the European flagship of the US company Vantage Data Centers. Besides North America, Vantage has data centers in Hong Kong, Australia, South Africa and even Poland, but the most striking in Europe is the roughly 70,000-square-metre three-storey building in Wales, United Kingdom. It should hold nearly 35,000 square metres of technical space and 19,000 server cabinets.
But that is not all: the data center in Wales is part of a "campus" of more than 186,000 square metres comprising three fully developed data centers, two of which are in operation as of autumn 2023. The campus is designed to exceed Tier III standards and to meet the demand of customers from different regions of the world.
Covilhã data center
Area: 75,000 m2
Location: Covilhã, Portugal
Operator: Altice Portugal (formerly Portugal Telecom)
First place goes to the Covilhã data center, owned by Portugal's largest telecom company. It is a building internationally recognised for its architecture, design and innovation alike. Naturally its size is also striking: nearly 75,000 square metres. The data center's location in the Castelo Branco region of central Portugal was chosen with environmental conditions in mind. It is one of the coolest places in Portugal.
Seismic activity, humidity and the likelihood of flooding were also considered, and the low salinity is noted too. In a region with high salinity the air may contain more salt particles. Salt particles can be corrosive and shorten the life of electronics such as servers and other IT equipment.
The Covilhã data center stands out not only for its size but also for its environmental friendliness. The facility has a rainwater collection system, a garden with more than 600 trees, and solar energy is generated on site.
Last year it was reported in the media that the telecom company is trying to sell its largest data center for 100 million euros.
This article was compiled from publicly available information on the internet.