Data centre construction glossary

The vocabulary of Europe's data centre buildout, in plain English.

IT load (MW)

The electrical capacity available to computing equipment, the industry's standard measure of a facility's size. A "100MW campus" means 100MW for servers, not the total site draw. DC Spotter tracks projects of 15MW IT load and above.

Hyperscale

Facilities built for a single very large operator (cloud or AI), typically tens to hundreds of MW, often self-built or built-to-suit by developers.

Colocation

A facility whose operator rents space and power to many customers. The traditional backbone of European markets like Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam.

Campus

A multi-building site under one master plan, phased over years. Campus announcements usually cite the end-state capacity, not what gets built first.

FLAP-D

Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin: Europe's five established data centre hubs. Power scarcity in FLAP-D is pushing growth to secondary markets.

Grid connection / TSO queue

The agreement (and waiting list) to draw power from the transmission network. In constrained markets this is the scarcest asset a project can hold, and connection queues are public in several countries.

Substation

The switching and transformer station linking a site to the grid. A new or upgraded substation application is one of the strongest early signals of a serious project.

EIA / VIA / UVP

Environmental impact assessment: the statutory review large projects undergo. Italy's VIA and Germany's UVP registers publish filings that often reveal projects months before any press coverage.

Outline vs full planning

UK-style two-step consent: outline settles the principle of development; full (or "reserved matters") settles the detail. Big campuses often go outline first.

SPV (special purpose vehicle)

A company created to hold one project or site, often with an anonymous name. Land bought by a three-week-old SPV is how big operators move quietly.

Fit-out

Installing the electrical and cooling systems and IT space inside a completed shell, typically the most expensive phase per square metre.

PUE (power usage effectiveness)

Total facility power divided by IT power. Modern European builds target 1.2 or below; regulators increasingly ask for it in planning documents.

RFS (ready for service)

The date a facility can accept customer equipment, the milestone that actually matters in delivery schedules.

Heat reuse

Exporting waste heat to district heating networks, increasingly a planning condition in Germany and the Nordics.

Powered land

A site sold with grid capacity already secured, the premium product of the current land market.