Greece Sets Renewable Quotas and Financial Bonds for Data Centre Grid Access

Greece is moving to impose dedicated grid-connection rules on data centres after applications for high-voltage capacity doubled — from five to nine gigawatts — across just two summer months. Balkan Green Energy News disclosed the draft legislation, which was proposed by the Ministry of Environment and Energy to prevent data centres from exhausting available capacity on the country’s high-voltage network.

Under the proposal, developers would be required to cover at least 60 per cent of their electricity consumption from renewable sources, either through direct lines to green-generation facilities or long-term corporate power purchase agreements. Complexes exceeding 200 MW could qualify for priority grid access, but only if they commit to sourcing 80 per cent of their power from distributed generation or industrial storage systems capable of discharging for a minimum of six hours.

Financial guarantees are also part of the package: investors would need to put up €200,000 per megawatt of declared capacity, held for a three-year period. The draft would additionally carve out a dedicated data-centre block in grid operator IPTO’s ten-year development plan.

To bring greater transparency to connection decisions, the legislation foresees a formal classification of substations as free, partially congested, or fully congested, with mandatory status updates every two months. A separate provision explicitly bans the artificial splitting of projects into smaller units as a way to sidestep regulatory thresholds.

Source: Balkan Green Energy News