Summary
- AWS would lease the completed facility for 15 years while PPC provides the site, buildings, and supporting energy infrastructure.
- Initial planned input capacity is 300MW, with possible expansion to 1GW subject to further agreements and market conditions.
- The project still requires definitive agreements, due diligence, grid connection, and regulatory approvals.
PPC Group and Amazon Web Services have signed a binding memorandum of understanding setting the commercial framework for a 300MW data centre at the Agios Dimitrios power station site in Western Macedonia.
The agreement was announced on 17 September, outside DataCentral’s core 48-hour sourcing window, but materially advances a project PPC has promoted since 2025.
Under the framework, AWS would lease the completed data centre for 15 years. PPC would supply the land, buildings, and supporting energy infrastructure, while AWS would install and operate the IT equipment.
The first phase is planned around 300MW of input power. The companies intend to explore expansion to as much as 1GW, subject to market conditions, mutual agreement, and further definitive contracts.
AWS would also purchase renewable electricity supplied by PPC through long-term power purchase agreements, subject to final terms.
The memorandum is binding, but the data centre itself is not yet unconditional. PPC states that the project remains subject to due diligence, definitive agreements, securing the required grid connection, and obtaining approvals.
From lignite generation to digital load
Agios Dimitrios gives the project an unusual infrastructure context. Western Macedonia has historically been one of Greece’s major lignite-generation regions, and PPC is redeveloping former fossil-energy assets as part of a wider investment programme spanning renewable generation, storage, and technology infrastructure.
Placing a hyperscale data centre on an established power site offers potential advantages. Large industrial parcels, transmission infrastructure, and an energy workforce can all be more difficult to assemble on a conventional greenfield campus.
Existing power infrastructure does not automatically produce a usable 300MW data centre connection. Network studies still have to establish how much load can be served, what reinforcement is needed, and under what operating conditions the connection can be delivered.
The scale is significant even before the proposed 1GW option. A 300MW input load would place Agios Dimitrios among the larger European data centre projects if delivered, while 1GW would move it into a category occupied by only the most ambitious hyperscale campus proposals.
A different ownership model
The proposed division of responsibilities is also notable. PPC would own and deliver the property and energy infrastructure while AWS supplies and operates the IT layer under a long lease.
That structure gives the utility a role much further downstream than simply selling electricity. It also gives AWS access to a site whose development is closely linked to an incumbent power company with land and energy assets in the region.
Long-term renewable PPAs would address electricity procurement, but they are separate from the facility’s resilience architecture. A hyperscale site still requires decisions on substations, backup power, UPS systems, cooling, network diversity, and the physical sequence in which capacity is delivered.
PPC had previously said the Agios Dimitrios project could be ready rapidly once a hyperscaler agreement was in place. The AWS memorandum clears one of those commercial obstacles but does not remove the outstanding grid, permitting, and final-contract conditions identified in the announcement.
The agreement therefore turns Agios Dimitrios from a utility-backed hyperscale concept into a project with a named prospective occupier and a defined lease structure. The next milestones are less speculative: definitive documentation, connection capacity, approvals, and a construction programme capable of converting the first 300MW into operating infrastructure.
