Datacenter infrastructureNetherlands & Belgium

Datacenter grid
connection studies

Know how much power your site can draw, and when.

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The question behind the connection

A connection offer gives you a capacity. A grid study shows how that capacity holds up against your site's demand, every hour of the year.

Load meets the grid

The peak hour sets the requirement.

Illustrative 60 MW IT site
Hourly peaks approach the grid connection limit in summerIllustrative annual profile for 60 MW IT load. Daily mean and peak-hour load rise in summer. The peak reaches approximately 79 MW against an 80 MW connection. 556065707580 Facility load, MW 80 MW connection Peak ~79 MW JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Daily meanPeak hour of each dayGrid connection
Explore the analysis

Project reference

Client and site details confidential

A comparable view
of five candidate sites.

A global datacenter developer commissioned studies for five planned sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. We assessed each connection against its build-out phases and site demand.

Sites assessed
5
Connection per site
30 to 150 MW
Analysis resolution
8760 hours / year

Restrictions across sites and phases

2% to 34%

of the year subject to restrictions

What the client received

  • Candidate sites ranked on grid availability
  • Hourly congestion heatmaps per build-out phase
  • Back-up capacity and technology comparisons

Battery storage, gas and diesel gensets compared on capital cost and permit conditions.

How we work

Connection terms become
an operating plan.

We turn the operator's restrictions into an hourly power limit, test your site's demand against it, and quantify the shortfall.

  1. 1

    Connection terms

    Elia EDS or Dutch congestion research

  2. 2

    Hourly limits

    Per site and build-out phase

  3. 3

    Site demand

    IT load, cooling and weather

  4. 4

    Energy deficit

    Demand the grid cannot supply

  5. 5

    Back-up sizing

    Storage, generation and permits

How often the connection is restricted

The grid operator sets out the restriction regime for a flexible connection in its own documents, per zone, per direction and per build-out phase. We convert that into an hourly power limit for the connection point, for every year of the build horizon, so the restrictions become something a load model can be run against.

What the site actually draws

A datacenter load is not flat. IT load carries a day and week rhythm, and cooling tracks ambient temperature, so the site peak lands in summer and moves between weather years. Modelling IT load and cooling separately changes the deficit the restrictions produce, which a flat annual average hides.

What covers the deficit

Battery storage, gas gensets and diesel gensets, each sized against the restricted hours rather than against nameplate capacity. Permit conditions decide as much as cost here: a diesel genset is cheaper to install but capped in running hours, so it stops being an option once the restrictions get long.

Which candidate site to take

Candidate connection points ranked by residual capacity and expected restrictions over the build horizon, so siting is decided on the hours the grid will allow rather than on queue position alone.

Capacity explained

The connection powers
more than the servers.

Power usage effectiveness, or PUE, relates total facility power to IT power. Cooling and auxiliaries use part of your connection. The design PUE determines how much remains for IT.

Same connection, different IT capacity

100 MW at the meter

IT capacityCooling & auxiliaries
Design PUEShare of the 100 MW connection
1.10
90.9 MW IT9.1 MW
1.20
83.3 MW IT16.7 MW
1.30
76.9 MW IT23.1 MW
1.40
71.4 MW IT28.6 MW
1.50
66.7 MW IT33.3 MW
24.2 MWdifference in IT capacity between design PUE 1.10 and 1.50, on the same connection.

The hourly view

Cooling changes.
Your IT load stays.

In this illustrative 60 MW IT profile, cooling and auxiliary demand rises from about 8 MW in winter to 15 MW in summer.

The peak hour reaches approximately 79 MW against an 80 MW connection. An annual average would hide how little headroom remains.

Annual average PUE
1.19
Peak-hour PUE
1.32

Demand through the year

Illustrative 60 MW IT site / 80 MW connection

Hourly peaks approach the grid connection limit in summerIllustrative annual profile for 60 MW IT load. Daily mean and peak-hour load rise in summer. The peak reaches approximately 79 MW against an 80 MW connection. 556065707580 Facility load, MW 80 MW connection Peak ~79 MW JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Daily meanPeak hour of each dayGrid connection

Cooling & auxiliaries

Added to the IT base load
08 MW in winter15 MW in summerJanMarMayJulSepNov
Both the restriction hours and the load during those hours determine the energy deficit.
Modelled site load

A full year at 150 MW

111 MW IT / 150 MW connection
Modelled hourly site load over one year for a datacenter with 111 MW of IT capacity on a 150 MW grid connection, stacked as IT load, auxiliaries and cooling, with the 135 MW design point and the 150 MW connection marked
Hourly site load for one year, modelled for a site with 111 MW of IT capacity on a 150 MW connection. IT load averages 87.4 MW and auxiliaries 5.4 MW. Cooling averages 16.5 MW but tracks the weather, and pushes the summer peaks up to the 135 MW design point, 90% of the connection. Annual PUE is 1.25, with 1.15 in winter and 1.39 in summer.

Local grid conditions

Two countries.
The same hourly question.

BE

Belgium

Elia EDS

Elia states the flexibility attached to a connection through EDS parameters: the share of time under preventive flex, the share under curative flex, the share of active energy affected and the flexible energy per year. We turn those bands into an hourly profile per site and per build-out phase.

Elia EDS analysis
NL

Netherlands

Congestion research and BirdFlow

TenneT and the regional operators publish congestion research per area, which sets out whether capacity exists at all. For the hours themselves we run BirdFlow, our power-flow model of the Dutch transmission grid, which gives the expected hourly restrictions per substation from 2027 onwards.

BirdFlow
Netherlands, BirdFlow study

What a TDTR offtake right delivers

Stacked bars of delivered offtake energy per model year from 2029 to 2045: a firm block, a TDTR tranche above it and a hatched band for the energy the grid limits, against the full transport right
Annual offtake energy per model year. The dark base is the firm block, always delivered; the blue tranche above it is TDTR. The hatched top is the energy the grid limits: up to about 7% of the full right around 2039 to 2041, and none from 2042 onwards in this run.

Your connection point

Put your site's
grid constraints in focus.

Share the location, requested capacity and connection documents. We will assess the hourly restrictions and the capacity needed to cover them.

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