Expert on the center in Topusko: ‘There is a serious risk… It can also bring lower energy prices…’

Solar power plant, own wells and 280 km of transmission lines

The Center’s strategic partner Greenvolt will build a 500 MW photovoltaic power plant exclusively for the Center’s needs.

Investments in the transmission power grid of Croatia will significantly increase the safety and stability of the entire system, and at the same time, by increasing the capacity, enable the connection of approximately 5.2 GW of unused sources of renewable energy to the Croatian power system.

This center will increase the number of private producers of electricity present in Croatia so that their presence, due to potential surpluses, can reduce the price of electricity for citizens and the economy. The center will use its own wells and is not connected to the existing water and sewage network, it was said at the presentation. They will use their own water sources and their own solution for cooling the system. The process by which water is used for the purpose of cooling is evaporation so that its chemical composition does not change in any way, the smaller part of the water that the cooling system fails to evaporate is returned to nature via absorption wells, in other words, nothing more is returned to nature. it was not part of nature when the water was drawn.

Significant investments will be made in the expansion and improvement of the existing road infrastructure, as well as pipes for optical infrastructure.

Total investments in infrastructure that are given to the state and society, the local community and the county – investments in electrical, road and optical infrastructure – have a total value of around 500 million euros, it was said. The project will bring more than 3,000 jobs during construction, 1,500 when it starts working, and will indirectly affect the creation of 6,000 jobs. The start of construction of the Topusko AI innovation and development center is planned for 2027, and the start of work is scheduled for the beginning of 2029.

The challenges of such a project

We talked about the technical details of the entire project with Leo Mrši, vice-rector for research and development at Algebra Bernays University.

– Today, a large number of data centers are actively operating in the region, knowledge of their construction and experience in management exists. In order to realize the construction of the data center, it is necessary to meet several prerequisites that depend significantly on the size and complexity of the investment, and as such, affect the deadlines – he said.

He emphasized that it is important to point out that the total estimated amount of the investment is related to the broader context of the investment, which includes meeting the prerequisites and building the center itself and related capacities.

– This kind of investment implies the parallel launch of new production, transmission, storage, flexibility, mentioned own wells, adaptation of energy balancing contracts and strengthening of the existing network. All together, it represents an opportunity for experts who, through the establishment of such an ecosystem, can develop engineering knowledge and build globally competitive careers in the next five to ten years. This refers to the experience of engineers in electrical engineering and energy plant planning, as well as experience in computing and information sciences – said Mršić and they point out that at Algebra-Bernays they offer programs vertically oriented towards the application of computer knowledge and various industries, and that just such projects represent an opportunity for a step forward while the experts remain in Croatia while at the same time building a globally recognizable career.

– As a rule, the planning of such projects includes the development of the ecosystem and it cannot be realized by the “point-to-point” principle, but by careful planning of ecosystem elements that will create a sustainable whole over time – he said.

– On the other hand, a project of this size and complexity is accompanied by challenges related to environmental protection, thermal waste, interventions in space, noise and general cumulative impact on the local environment. Centers of this type are cooled in different ways, with a tendency towards liquid cooling due to denser heat. Even in the most efficient centers today, cooling accounts for about 10% of consumption, and it can reach the level of 30%. Understanding the work of such centers in all elements of their work and interdisciplinarity can be a source of motivation for generations of engineers and researchers – the same Mrši. to the question of how such a huge center would function and be cooled.

One of the effects that is mentioned along with the Pantheon is the economic one, and Mršić adds that it may be big, but it is not automatically widely social.

– The number of permanent employees in modern data centers is often significantly higher in the construction phase than in the maturity phase, and the greatest added value often goes to the owners of the infrastructure and tenants of computing capacity. The users would probably be global tenants and larger technology companies, the financial sector, research institutions and state platforms, which requires careful planning of use – he adds.

The strategic maintenance plan will have to follow the investment due to the rapid obsolescence of technology, the development of the user community and the planning of intellectual capacities through people who will know how to establish, but also offer built capacities to the market, he said.

– There is a serious risk of establishing an infrastructure that will have no one to use and manage it, therefore it is important to include higher education institutions in the project at an early stage so that in the education cycle of three to five years young experts can observe and participate in the activities in parallel and later take positions in the project itself. Algebra Bernays University is currently enrolling the first generation of students for an international doctoral program in technical sciences in the field of computer science, where students will, among other things, have the opportunity to work on new generation supercomputers and actively prepare for the jobs of the future, he pointed out.

What will be the direct benefit for citizens from such a center, we asked Mrši.

– For an ordinary citizen, the immediate benefit from this project would not be dramatic. Proximity can reduce latency for some services, but most everyday services are more. it works fast enough through regional European hubs. Citizens can benefit from lower energy prices, better data networks, local jobs, new market-oriented educational programs, additional tax revenues and domestic access to AI infrastructure, and this will certainly be discussed in the weeks ahead – he said at the end of the conversation.