A data center that is not connected to the electricity grid went up in Ireland

A new data center has been commissioned in Ireland, which operates on an exceptional solution: it is not connected to the public electricity grid at all.

According to Pure Data Centers Group, which operates the data center, and its energy solutions supplier AVK, it is the first data center in Europe that operates entirely on a large-scale microgrid.

A microgrid is an independent, local power system. In this case, it functions completely as its own island, generating and managing all the energy needed by the data center. Microgrids have already been used in Europe in the past, for example in industry.

The new data center is located outside Dublin, the capital of Ireland. Its total capacity is 110 megawatts.

The electricity needed by the data center is currently produced by engines using natural gas. However, if necessary, they can be converted to also use hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO). Biomethane has also been tried as a power source, he says news website CNBC.

For now, the data center operates without connection to the public electricity grid. If a network connection is later obtained, it could feed electricity from its battery storage back into the network with a power of up to 20 megawatts.

CEO of AVK By Ben Pritchard new types of investors are also entering the market, who are interested in building and owning microgrids and selling the electricity they produce to data centers.

Microgrids as a solution to growing electricity consumption

Also a Finnish technology company Wärtsilä raised together with AVK, which offers energy solutions, in the September 2025 publication in his report microgrids as a possible way to speed up the construction of data centers and Europe’s energy transition. Wärtsilä manufactures, among other things, engine power plants.

According to the report, the electricity consumption of data centers is estimated to increase by 250 percent by 2030, i.e. from 10 gigawatts to 35 gigawatts. At the same time, the European electricity grid is burdened by high energy prices and long network connection queues, which is why data center operators are increasingly looking for off-grid energy solutions.

The report also modeled different options for energy production. According to it, the combination of motor power plants, renewable energy and energy storages produced the lowest levelized price of electricity, i.e. around 108 euros per megawatt hour. This corresponds to a price of about 10.8 cents per kilowatt hour.