Large-scale data center with an energy consumption that will be six times greater than...

Near the city of Lappeenranta in Southern Finland, plans are underway to construct a large-scale data center with an energy consumption that will be six times greater than that of Estonia's largest industrial consumer, Estonian Cell. The city of Lappeenranta and the Finnish company Polarnode have signed a one-billion-euro agreement regarding this project.

The planned data center will require up to 150 megawatts of electricity, whereas Estonian Cell uses approximately 25 megawatts. The center is slated for construction in Pajarila, near Lappeenranta, where the city has allocated a 32-hectare area for this purpose.

Mikko Toivanen, the head of Polarnode, explained that Lappeenranta was chosen due to the sufficient available capacity in the electricity grid, which allows for a quick start to construction and flexible further development. According to Toivanen, Lappeenranta has a significant reserve of electrical power that can be utilized within a short timeframe, thereby accelerating the completion of the data center.

Polarnode is responsible for the planning and construction of the data center but is seeking an operator through an international tender who will actually run the facility. This approach is common in data center development: the developer builds the necessary infrastructure, into which large technology companies can install their servers and equipment.

Polarnode intends to launch the tender for finding an operator as early as April, and the future user of the data center could be identified by August. Construction work is scheduled to begin at the start of 2026.

The data center is expected to create around 100 jobs in Lappeenranta, with over half intended for highly educated specialists. Toivanen refuted claims that data centers do not create jobs, emphasizing that operators require a highly qualified workforce.

Lappeenranta is also an attractive location for building a data center due to the presence of LUT University, which offers education in electrical engineering and information technology.

Finland's lower electricity prices provide a competitive advantage. The price of electricity is one of the most significant costs in operating data centers, as large server farms consume enormous amounts of energy. Finland has a considerable advantage over Estonia in this regard: last year, the average spot price of electricity in Finland was 45.58 euros per megawatt-hour, while in Estonia it was almost twice as high, at 87.28 euros per megawatt-hour.

To improve energy efficiency, Polarnode plans to direct the excess heat generated by the data center into Lappeenranta's district heating network. A similar system is already in use in several Finnish data centers and helps to reduce their environmental footprint.

In recent years, there has been an explosive growth in investments in data centers worldwide, mainly due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI). Since the breakthrough of ChatGPT and other large language models, the training and operation of AI systems require very large computational capacities.

In addition to the Lappeenranta project, Finland has attracted other large data center investments in recent years. For example, technology company Google has already invested 4.5 billion euros in its Hamina data center and recently announced plans to build two additional data centers in Muhos and Kajaani, for which 1,400 hectares of land have been acquired. According to Finnish media, Google's total future investments could even exceed 10 billion euros.


Source: Delfi Ärileht

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