Thylander and CIP break ground on 11.5 MW grid-reactive data center at Esbjerg Port

Thylander and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) broke ground on Dansk Data Center 1 (DDC1) at Esbjerg Port on 13 August 2026^[1]. The colocation facility will offer 11.5 MW at first commissioning, targeted for October 2027^[1], and is positioned as one of the first major data centers wholly owned and operated by Danish companies.

Ownership and financing

DDC1 is owned by PensionDanmark, the Thylander Group, and CIP through its CI Microgrid Electrification Fund^[1]. Plexar, the energy management subsidiary whose CEO Karsten Uhd Plauborg is also a CIP partner, is the fourth party in the construction consortium. The grid connection is provided by local distribution operator N1.

The project is explicitly framed as a pilot - a template for how Danish digital infrastructure should be developed in closer collaboration with the energy system going forward.

Grid-reactive design

The facility's defining technical feature is its grid-reactive operating mode^[1]. Key design elements include:

• Energy consumption adjustable in real time to match available grid capacity
• On-site energy storage to support grid balancing
• Closed-loop cooling to reduce water consumption
• Waste heat routed to utility DIN Forsyning for district heating

The site sits at the NATO port in Esbjerg, on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula, a location the developers say supports both security of supply and connectivity. Esbjerg already hosts Bulk's DK01 campus, which opened in 2019, and Meta has previously acquired land in the municipality, making DDC1 a new entrant into an area with established data center infrastructure.

Longer-term scale

The 11.5 MW first phase is a fraction of Thylander's stated ambition. When the project was first announced in May 2025, Thylander outlined plans for a facility exceeding 100 MW, with expansion potential to 200 MW across multiple phases. Whether subsequent phases proceed - and on what timeline - will depend on how the pilot performs commercially and operationally.

The grid-reactive model is the variable to watch. Demand-side flexibility at data centers is increasingly a regulatory expectation across Europe, not a differentiator, and DDC1's Plexar-managed system will be an early live test of whether a colocation operator can deliver that flexibility at commercial scale while maintaining the uptime guarantees tenants require.