Greece’s PPC is turning a former lignite site into a privately powered digital infrastructure campus for Amazon Web Services, offering a potential model for Southeast European utilities seeking to monetise scarce grid access as data-centre electricity demand accelerates.
PPC and AWS signed a memorandum on Sept. 17 covering development of a data centre at Agios Dimitrios in Western Macedonia with an initial electricity supply capacity of 300 MW and potential expansion to as much as 1 GW.
Under the agreement, PPC will provide the land, buildings and supporting energy infrastructure, while AWS will install and operate the IT equipment.
AWS would lease the completed data centre for 15 years, while PPC would also supply renewable electricity under long-term power purchase agreements.
The structure is more significant for the regional electricity market than another large data-centre announcement.
PPC is effectively combining land, existing power infrastructure, generation, grid access and telecommunications into a single product for an energy-intensive digital customer.
That could give utilities controlling former thermal power sites a new advantage as obtaining hundreds of megawatts of firm electricity capacity becomes one of the main constraints on European data-centre development.
Power infrastructure becomes the location advantage
Data-centre developers traditionally prioritised fibre connectivity, land, taxation and proximity to customers.
Electricity availability is increasingly becoming the limiting factor.
A hyperscale campus requiring 300 MW represents a demand block comparable with a substantial industrial plant. Expansion towards 1 GW would create an electricity consumer comparable in scale with some of Southeast Europe’s largest generating units.
Securing that demand through a conventional greenfield grid connection can require years of transmission investment.
Agios Dimitrios offers something different.
The site already sits inside an established power-generation area with substantial electricity infrastructure and around 300,000 square metres of land controlled by PPC.
The utility has said it plans to supply much of the campus through a behind-the-meter energy model, combining local generation and flexibility resources while retaining access to the wider electricity system.
That effectively changes the data-centre connection problem.
Instead of asking the transmission network to provide the entire additional load immediately, part of the electricity system is built around the consumer itself.
The result begins to resemble a private power campus rather than a conventional industrial connection.
PPC packages electricity with real estate
The commercial structure also marks a shift in PPC’s business model.
The group does not intend to operate AWS’s computing equipment.
Instead, it would own and develop the physical data-centre infrastructure and earn recurring revenue from a combination of property leasing, electricity supply and supporting infrastructure.
PPC has estimated capital expenditure of around €1.2 billion for the initial 300 MW phase, which is included in its current strategic investment plan.
Operations are targeted to begin by end-2028.
Expansion towards 1 GW would require additional agreements and investment decisions.
This separates the physical infrastructure from the digital business.
AWS operates the servers.
PPC owns the powered site.
For utilities, that model is potentially attractive because it monetises capabilities they already possess: land, grid knowledge, generation portfolios, substations and electricity trading.
The customer does not simply buy MWh.
It buys access to a location where hundreds of megawatts can realistically be delivered.
Behind-the-meter model reduces grid dependence
PPC’s planned energy architecture could become the most important part of the project for other Southeast European markets.
The group has outlined a mix including renewable generation, storage and other controllable generation around its Western Macedonia assets, with the national grid providing another supply route.
The objective is not complete electrical isolation.
Data centres require extremely high reliability and will still need robust grid connections and backup arrangements.
But generating and managing more electricity close to the load can reduce the amount of capacity that must be continuously supplied through constrained transmission corridors.
That changes the economic value of former generation sites.
A closed coal plant may no longer produce electricity, but its location can retain valuable infrastructure: high-voltage connections, substations, land, water systems, permitting history and established energy corridors.
Those assets can be difficult and expensive to reproduce at a greenfield data-centre location.
The electricity connection therefore becomes part of the site’s real-estate value.
Former power stations gain second life
That could have wider implications across Southeast Europe.
The region contains numerous coal and thermal-generation sites that will eventually reduce operations or close as power systems decarbonise.
Many occupy large industrial areas connected directly to high-voltage networks.
Traditionally, closure creates a regional economic problem and potentially leaves network infrastructure underused.
Large electricity consumers provide another option.
Data centres, hydrogen production, advanced manufacturing and other power-intensive industries can potentially reuse the electrical infrastructure rather than requiring an entirely new connection elsewhere.
The concept is particularly relevant where utilities already own the land.
A utility can package the site with renewable supply, storage, grid connection, fibre and energy-management services.
That is a materially different product from selling electricity under a conventional corporate PPA.
It is selling powered land.
AI demand could reshape utility strategy
The AWS agreement also demonstrates how artificial-intelligence investment is beginning to change utility strategy.
PPC has identified data centres as a new growth business alongside renewables, networks and telecommunications and has previously said it could develop additional capacity in Greece and potentially other markets where the group operates.
The attraction is partly demand growth.
European utilities have spent much of the past decade preparing for higher electricity consumption from EVs, heating and industrial electrification.
AI and cloud computing add large concentrated loads capable of appearing much faster than traditional network planning cycles.
Utilities that can provide firm MW quickly could therefore capture value well beyond the wholesale electricity margin.
The competitive asset increasingly becomes the combination of generation and connection capacity.
That could favour incumbent utilities over independent property developers because utilities control infrastructure that hyperscalers cannot easily replicate themselves.
The Greek project remains subject to final agreements and market conditions, particularly for expansion beyond the initial 300 MW.
But the AWS memorandum establishes a contracted customer framework around a strategy PPC had previously presented largely as a development concept.
The significance for Southeast Europe is therefore not simply that another data centre is being built.
PPC is demonstrating how a former power-generation site can be converted into a long-term digital infrastructure business where the scarce product is not land or computing equipment.
It is reliable access to hundreds of megawatts.
As data-centre demand accelerates, former power stations may become some of the region’s most valuable digital real estate precisely because the electricity infrastructure is already there.
