It’s a well-established fact that Europe’s Nordic nations are home to some of the world’s highest ratios of renewable energy production, ample grid connectivity, and cool climates. All those features make them a perfect home for massive data centers— perhaps too perfect. After a sudden inrush of a total of 60 GW of grid connection requests, 14 GW of those for datacenters, Denmark’s Energinet was forced to issue a moratorium on new large-scale installations, according to a CNBC report.
For reference, Denmark’s current power peak power consumption is estimated around 7 GW, so it’s easy enough to understand why the action was necessary. The pause is meant to last three months, though there’s speculation that that period might be extended given the need to reprioritize many of the requests.
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DDCI CEO Henrik Hansen told CNBC that the connection request queue reflects a “fantasy”, and that “the gap between what’s available and what’s requested is growing”, while seemingly asking for better criteria to determine the priority for connections. The same article quotes Sebastian Bøtcher from Schneider Electric describing the situation as “energy policy ‘hunger games’ between data centers and Danish businesses”.
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