Analysis
The numbers behind the plan
Dated, sourced analysis that feeds one step of the flow. Each piece ends where its numbers are used.
Plan · siting Where is Europe building data centres outside the big hubs? Our tracker counts 295 data-centre projects outside Europe’s seven hub metros. See which countries lead and how far their projects have got. 
Build · cooling spec Is 45 °C coolant the end of chillers? A test in 16 cities Nvidia says chillers are needed maybe 1% of the year. We tested ten years of hourly weather in 16 European cities. 
Plan · pipeline and planning risk Where Europe says no to data centres: 23 decisions and who made them 23 decisions since 2025 stopped, banned or rationed data centres in Europe. The widest-reaching ones sit in grid rules and zoning plans. 
Operate · energy What one megawatt of flexible load is worth in 15 European power markets Moving 4 MWh a day to the cheapest hours would have saved EUR 85k to 217k per MW-year in 15 zones, on day-ahead energy prices alone. 
Plan · grid connection tracker How long does a data-centre grid connection take in Europe? From 7.5 months to an offer in Ireland to the late 2030s in Amsterdam: the published waits, and the allocation rules that matter more. 
Operate · security Moving from 24/7 on-site guarding to remote monitoring: what it costs and what you give up One security post staffed around the clock costs about €141,000 to €256,000 a year in wage floors in Spain, France and Belgium. What remote monitoring replaces, and what still needs a person on site. 
Sell · data and intelligence Software Is Disappearing. Your Data Centre’s Data Is What’s Left AI agents make software cheap. A site’s years of operating data are what stays scarce: own it, keep it under EU law and check who may train on it. 
Plan · siting Data centre waste heat reuse depends on who is next door At PUE 1.2, a 10% energy reuse share for a 1 MW IT hall is about 120 kW on average. A nearby heat network and summer demand decide the rest. 
Plan · market comparison European Grid Index for data centres, September 2026 Hourly grid carbon for 12 European markets in September 2026. Norway averaged 24 g, Poland 547 g; timing could cut a flexible load’s carbon by up to 58%. 
Plan · power sourcing Small Modular Reactor for a Data Centre: How It Works, What It Takes How an SMR makes power, which designs are licensed, which data-centre deals are signed, and what 100 MW and 1 GW campuses need. 
Operate · energy Carbon-aware computing in Europe: what shifting load saves Shifting flexible compute to cleaner hours cuts reported emissions, but the saving depends on country, window and signal. Evidence and a checklist. 
Plan · siting How to Choose a Data Centre Location: Five Maps, Two Permanent Siting a data centre means overlaying five constraint maps. Three are dissolving this decade. Two never will, and they point to a place we know. 
Build · resilience OVHcloud Data Centre Fire: How Its Cheapest Design Lost Everything OVHcloud’s SBG2 fire traces back to its free-cooling design: the chimney that made it cheap left no sealed room for a gas system to work. 
Build · electrical 800V DC Power for 1 MW Server Racks: Copper, Safety, EU Rules At 1 MW a 54 V rack draws 18,519 A and an 800 V DC rack 1,250 A. Worked copper figures, EU rules, DC protection and hardware dates. 
Plan · planning risk Data Center Opposition Is Now America’s Real AI Bottleneck Local opposition blocked or delayed $130 billion of US data-center projects in Q1 2026. Why permits, not only power or chips, now limit the AI buildout. 
Sell · operators Equinix’s Nuclear Power Agreements: What Each One Secures Equinix named four nuclear partners in 2025. Their agreements leave delivery questions open; the record does not support a single 6 GW deal. 
Plan · grid connection Phantom Data Center Power Demand Is Raising Your Bill Phantom data center power demand is padding PJM’s capacity auction — and ordinary households are paying for gigawatts that will never get built. 
Plan · siting Samsung’s Floating Data Center: 50 MW, Permits Unsettled Samsung and Mousterian have a 50 MW floating data centre engineering deal. Site, power and approvals remain unresolved; shipyard fabrication may still shorten delivery. 
Sell · demand OpenAI Nvidia Ohio Data Center Deal: Real Demand? The OpenAI Nvidia Ohio data center deal has Nvidia funding its own customer’s $500B lease — demand, or a hall of mirrors? 
Plan · grid connection tracker AI Data Center Power Bottleneck: Rack Power and Grid Waits, 2026 Power, not GPUs, sets the schedule for an AI data center. What 10 MW of IT load holds at today’s rack ratings, and the published grid waits in the US and Europe. 
Operate · cooling and water AI Data Center Water Didn’t Vanish, It Moved Nvidia and Microsoft say they’ve crushed AI data center water use. They’re right, inside the walls. But the water did not disappear; it evaporated at the power plant instead, invisibly and at scale. 
Plan · power sourcing The $1 Trillion Data Center Boom Is Breaking the Grid The AI data center boom has officially gone parabolic: global spending is crossing the $1 trillion mark in 2026, power demand is set to double, and the grid can’t cope. 
Sell · market intelligence Intelligence like Electricity and Data Center like Power Plants. The Future of an AI-Metered World How AI is transforming intelligence into a commodity and data centers into power plants for an AI-Metered World. 
Operate · energy How to Reduce Data Centre PUE: Measures and Real Results Measured results and forecasts for cutting PUE, and the cases where a lower number saves nothing. Every figure sourced or marked as our calculation. 
Build · cooling High-Density Liquid Cooling: Direct-to-Chip vs Immersion A 132 kW AI rack needs about 191 L/min of water at a 10 K rise. Flow maths, ASHRAE water classes, PFAS risk, EU rules and vendors. 
Plan · siting Urban Micro-Data Centers: Explore the Era of Neighborhood Cloud Infrastructure On February 12, 2026, the City of St. Louis quietly released a document that may well become the blueprint for modern urban planning in the artificial intelligence age. The text was a draft of new zoning regulations, but its contents addressed a phenomenon that has moved rapidly from theoretical white papers to physical reality: the […] 
Plan · market comparison Gigawatts and Guilt: 5 Crucial Data Center Trends Redefining the AI Boom “As Anthropic pledges to subsidize the grid and DeepSeek rewrites efficiency rules, new data center trends emerge from the chaos.” 
Build · cooling Cold Aisle vs Hot Aisle Containment: Which Is Better for Data Center Cooling? Cold vs hot aisle containment compared on savings, retrofit and fire safety, with a worked case against Germany’s EnEfG PUE limits. 
Build · electrical Lithium-Ion vs. Lead-Acid Batteries: The Right Choice for Data Center VRLA or lithium batteries for a data centre UPS? Fire risk, floor space, battery life and adoption compared using vendor, Eurobat and Uptime data. 
Build · fit-out cabling Fibre Optic Infrastructure for Data Centres: Optics, Cabling and Testing Compare four 400G optics, work through a 120 m fibre channel, and specify connectors, routes and acceptance tests. 
Sell · interconnection Meet-Me Room (MMR) in a Data Center: How It Works What a meet-me room does, what the standards say, and a worked loss budget showing when a cross-connect path through it stops working. 
Operate · energy and cooling How Data Centers Actually Control Humidity (And Why It Matters) Learn how relative humidity impacts data centers, and discover actionable solutions to optimize RH levels and protect critical infrastructure. Read more now!