Summary
- NDC Paris 1 will provide 7MW of IT capacity across 2,268 sq m of IT space, with delivery scheduled for 2027.
- The design can operate from conventional air cooling through to 100% direct liquid cooling for AI and HPC loads.
- Waste heat is intended to feed the Vélizy district heating network and support a neighbouring 365 home student residence.
Nation Data Center has started construction of a 7MW data centre in Vélizy-Villacoublay, bringing direct liquid cooling and heat recovery into a mixed use development in the western Paris technology cluster.
The Altarea owned operator’s NDC Paris 1 facility is being developed with 2,268 sq m of IT space and is scheduled for delivery in 2027. The project is designed for workloads ranging from conventional enterprise infrastructure to artificial intelligence and high performance computing, with cooling architecture that can move from 100% air cooling to 100% direct liquid cooling depending on rack requirements.
Altarea lists a target power usage effectiveness of 1.2. The data centre is being built alongside a 365 home social student residence, with recovered server heat intended to contribute to the local district heating system and the neighbouring accommodation.
The combination gives the project a different engineering profile from large peripheral hyperscale campuses. Vélizy is an established commercial and technology district where a relatively compact data centre must be integrated into an urban environment, rather than isolated on a large industrial plot. Cooling plant, heat export, acoustic performance, and access therefore sit alongside compute density as design constraints.
Direct liquid cooling is becoming increasingly relevant as AI accelerators push rack densities beyond the practical limits of traditional air cooling. NDC Paris 1 is not being designed as an exclusively liquid cooled building: the ability to support both approaches gives the operator flexibility to serve conventional racks while accommodating denser installations as customer requirements change.
That mixed architecture also affects the economics of the mechanical plant. A facility designed around a single cooling regime can optimise heavily for one workload profile, while a hybrid site has to maintain the distribution, controls, and operating procedures needed to support different thermal loads. The benefit is a wider addressable customer base and less dependence on an immediate wholesale shift towards liquid cooled hardware.
Heat reuse creates a second interface between the data centre and surrounding infrastructure. Servers turn most of the electricity they consume into heat, but exporting that energy requires more than installing a heat exchanger. The temperature and consistency of the recovered heat have to match the needs of the receiving network, while pipework, pumps, and commercial arrangements must be designed before neighbouring buildings become dependent on the supply.
At Vélizy, those conditions are being addressed while the data centre and student accommodation are developed as part of the same wider scheme. That proximity removes one of the recurring obstacles to heat reuse: a useful heat demand must exist close enough to the data centre to justify the network connection.
Nation Data Center currently operates facilities around Rennes and is developing further capacity in France as part of a broader regional network. Its portfolio increasingly spans both conventional colocation and facilities capable of supporting much denser computing loads.
The Vélizy project will therefore test two propositions at the same site: whether an urban facility can accommodate rapidly changing cooling requirements, and whether data centre heat recovery can be designed into neighbouring development rather than added after commissioning. Both will become more important as French data centre capacity expands into locations where planning, energy efficiency, and local integration carry greater weight.
