Summary
- AVK Capital will finance and own power infrastructure while AVK designs, commissions, operates, and maintains it.
- Customers will secure power through long-term Power Purchase Agreements rather than owning the generation assets upfront.
- The model covers technologies including microgrids, fuel cells, renewables integration, and standby systems.
AVK has launched a dedicated financing business that will fund and own on-site power infrastructure for data centres, separating the capital cost of generation equipment from the development of the facility itself.
AVK Capital will hold the investment the company secured from Partners Group in August and use that capital to finance power systems delivered to customers under long-term Power Purchase Agreements.
Under the model, AVK will design, build, commission, operate, and maintain the infrastructure while AVK Capital owns the underlying assets. The developer or operator pays for electricity as an operating expense rather than purchasing the plant as part of the data centre’s initial capital programme.
AVK says potential configurations include microgrids, modular generation, fuel cells, renewable-energy integration, and standby systems. The precise technology would depend on the site and its power requirement rather than a single standard generation platform.
The launch targets two related problems in European data centre development. The first is the time required to obtain sufficient grid capacity. The second is the amount of capital needed to build an alternative or supplementary power system while the wider data centre project is also consuming significant construction capital.
On-site generation has become increasingly prominent as large data centre projects seek hundreds of megawatts of capacity in electricity systems where connection reinforcement can take years. A behind-the-meter plant can, in some circumstances, allow construction or operation to proceed before a full utility connection becomes available.
It does not remove the engineering or commercial complexity. Developers still need fuel supply, planning and environmental approvals, electrical distribution, emissions control where combustion is involved, redundancy, maintenance, and a strategy for how the on-site system interacts with the grid.
The financing structure changes which party carries the capital burden. Instead of a data centre developer buying power plant and placing it on its own balance sheet, AVK Capital intends to recover its investment through contracted electricity revenues over the life of a PPA.
That approach resembles infrastructure financing models already established in renewable generation and utility assets, but applies them directly to the power systems sitting alongside data centre developments.
The attraction is clearest for projects where the building programme is viable but the grid timetable is not. Capital that would otherwise be absorbed by generators, microgrid controls, switchgear, and supporting systems can remain available for land, construction, mechanical plant, fit-out, or other parts of the campus.
AVK also argues that placing financing, engineering, operation, and maintenance within the same group reduces handovers between the organisations responsible for the power system. The company operates across the UK and Europe and says it has delivered or supported 3,500MW of power infrastructure.
The commercial risk does not disappear; it moves. AVK Capital will need long-term contracts capable of supporting the cost of the assets it owns, while customers will need to assess the price and contractual flexibility of an extended PPA against owning the infrastructure themselves.
The source of energy will also matter. An on-site system based on gas engines or other combustion plant has different fuel-price, emissions, planning, and carbon implications from fuel cells, storage, renewables, or a hybrid microgrid. Projects developed as a bridge to a delayed grid connection may require different economics from systems intended to operate permanently.
The launch is another indication that power procurement is becoming embedded much earlier in data centre development. Operators can no longer assume that a conventional grid connection will arrive on the same schedule as the building.
AVK Capital’s model effectively turns that constraint into a separate infrastructure contract: the data centre developer secures a powered site through a PPA, while a specialist owner carries the power assets. Whether that proves cheaper over the full life of a project will depend on financing terms, fuel and electricity prices, utilisation, and the eventual relationship with the grid.
