Summary
- The installation described by NASK provides for 15MW of power capacity and approximately 200km of fibre infrastructure.
- Modular construction, redundant utilities, and physical protection are intended to support critical public-sector services.
- Heat recovery, photovoltaic generation, potential hydrogen technology, and digital-twin monitoring form part of the proposed design.
Poland’s NASK National Research Institute has detailed the engineering design of its National Data Processing Centre, including 15MW of planned power capacity, approximately 200km of fibre infrastructure, and modular construction intended to support continuous government services.
The project forms part of Poland’s wider investment in secure state computing infrastructure, backed by approximately PLN1.56bn in public funding. NASK intends to provide a protected environment for national registers, electronic public services, and healthcare information systems.
The latest technical information builds on the earlier funding programme for Poland’s national data-centre network, adding detail about the physical systems that will support the services hosted within it.
NASK describes a 15MW installation designed for staged expansion, although the figure should not be treated as commissioned IT load or automatically applied to every location within the wider programme.
The building will use modular construction, allowing additional sections to be introduced as requirements increase. Completed sections are intended to remain operational while new capacity is added.
That approach requires the supporting infrastructure to accommodate expansion without interrupting existing services. Electrical distribution, cooling systems, communications, and maintenance access must be arranged so additional modules can be connected without introducing unacceptable operational risks.
The facility is intended to host systems used by government departments and public institutions. NASK identifies electronic prescriptions, digital identity services, administrative applications, and state records among the services requiring dependable infrastructure.
These workloads impose different continuity requirements from applications that can tolerate extended interruptions. Failures affecting electricity, cooling, communications, or physical security may interrupt services used directly by citizens and public authorities.
NASK plans redundant power, cooling, and connectivity infrastructure so that alternative systems can take over when individual components fail. The effectiveness of such arrangements depends on how failures are isolated and whether the redundant equipment relies on common upstream services.
The centre will also incorporate physical protection against intrusion, sabotage, extreme weather, and other threats. Security design therefore extends beyond network controls to the building, its technical infrastructure, and the people authorised to access it.
Approximately 200km of dedicated fibre infrastructure is envisaged. The network will support communications associated with the project, although route diversity, equipment redundancy, and the services carried over those connections will influence the resilience achieved.
Energy systems and digital monitoring
NASK plans to recover heat from computing equipment for use with heat pumps. A future connection to buildings outside the facility could allow some of that heat to serve other users, subject to suitable infrastructure and demand.
Heat recovery requires the temperature of the available heat, the receiving system, and the distance between producer and consumer to be considered together. Heat pumps can raise temperatures to useful levels, but they consume electricity and introduce additional equipment and maintenance requirements.
Photovoltaic generation is also included in the project’s energy strategy. NASK has described the possibility of using some renewable electricity for hydrogen production, with hydrogen potentially supporting future power arrangements.
The proposal does not establish that hydrogen equipment has been commissioned or that conventional backup generators have already been replaced. Such systems would need suitable storage, conversion equipment, operating permissions, and arrangements for maintaining fuel availability.
Digital monitoring will form another component of the installation. NASK intends to develop a three-dimensional model of the building and its technical infrastructure, eventually linking it with operating information to create a digital twin.
The model is intended to support fault detection, maintenance planning, and energy management. Its usefulness will depend on accurate asset information and reliable connections to monitoring systems within the facility.
Digital twins can help engineers understand the relationships between equipment and observe changing operating conditions, but their effectiveness is limited by the quality and coverage of the data available.
Poland’s National Data Processing Centre is being developed around the continuity of public services rather than the commercial leasing of computing space. The emphasis on redundant systems, secure infrastructure, and long-term expansion reflects those operating requirements.
The overall programme is scheduled to continue towards 2029. Construction, network integration, technical commissioning, and the migration of government workloads will determine how the planned resilience architecture performs in operation.
