The bottleneck in artificial intelligence is not the chips. It is the grid connection. Building a data centre takes years of permitting and a new connection that never arrives. Botnia Compute does not wait: it starts from the connection points industrial estates already have and raises the contracted capacity as far as the network operator allows.
See how Botnia Compute connects industrial buildings, energy and computing capacity in a distributed network.
A conventional data centre takes years across planning, permits, construction and grid access. The connection queue is the sector's real limit today, and more money does not solve it. A different topology does.
At the same time, every industrial estate in Spain has thousands of connection points already built and already authorised. That connection — the cable, the substation, the right of access — is the slow, expensive part of any project, and there it is, paid for and waited out years ago.
Botnia Compute starts from that connection and has the contracted capacity raised up to the limit the distribution company authorises. It does not compete on euros per megawatt. It competes on capacity available without a grid queue, and on speed of deployment.
A conventional data centre depends on a new high-capacity connection and years of permitting. Botnia does not: it works on connection points that already exist, has the contracted capacity raised as far as the distribution company allows, and puts the generation and the node there.
That is the whole difference. Because each installation is small and independent, many can be done: the network grows building by building, with no construction project to wait for. The deployment target is of the order of a thousand buildings.
All on Botnia's account. The host provides space and is paid for it.
Instead of one enormous shed in one place, dozens of small modules spread across buildings that already exist, coordinated as though they were a single system.
We study your connection point and apply to the distribution company for an increase in contracted capacity, up to whatever limit it will allow. Your supply and your consumption are untouched: what is added is new capacity on a connection that already exists.
A compact module, with liquid cooling, solar PV on the roof and a battery. We install it, operate it and maintain it. The equipment is ours; the host invests nothing, manages nothing and carries no technical risk.
Our own interconnection layer distributes work across nodes according to the energy available at each site and the demands of each workload. From the outside, the compute customer sees a single resource.
Below a megawatt, a node falls into the same administrative and electrical category as any ordinary industrial installation. That decision — keeping it small — is what allows deployment in months rather than years.
It has a second effect. Because it is modular, every deployment takes the best silicon and the best cooling available at that moment. The network improves with each building that joins.
| Indoor installation | Outdoor installation | |
|---|---|---|
| Installed capacity | from 500 kWp to 999 kWp | from 500 kWp to 999 kWp |
| Where the module goes | A dedicated space inside the building | Flat roof, car park or free ground outside |
| Surface | Sized with the installed capacity and settled at the technical visit | |
| Generation | Solar PV on your roof | Solar PV on the roof and, where there is room, a canopy over the car park |
| Storage | LFP battery, with back-up for your plant in a blackout | |
| Cooling | Liquid, closed circuit | Liquid, in a weatherproof enclosure |
| Requirements | Clear floor space and access to the switchboard | A flat roof with permissible loading, or free ground |
| Connectivity | Dedicated fibre, provided by Botnia | |
| Host investment | None | |
| Contract | From 15 to 30 years | |
Product ranges. The capacity of each building depends on what its connection point will take and on what the distribution company authorises.
The agreement is long term and deliberately simple. You give us space, roof and electrical infrastructure; we provide everything else and pay you for it. Your business carries on exactly as it is.
If four of these six apply, it is worth a conversation.
We come back with an analysis of the electrical fit and a specific commercial proposal.
The node adapts to the building, not the other way round. Depending on yours, it goes inside or outside: on the roof, in the car park or on whatever free ground you have. Either way the solar array makes use of the roof and your operation carries on unchanged.
An area that does not interfere with your operation: a side bay, a mezzanine, a little-used corner of the store. The module is enclosed and liquid-cooled, so it sits alongside the activity without the noise of a plant room.
An outdoor module on the roof if it is flat, or in a car park or an area of free ground, with the solar array around it and, where it fits, a canopy over the parking spaces. It takes up not one metre of your productive floor: the natural choice if the building is full or you would rather nothing changed inside.
Which of the two fits is decided at the technical visit, with the roof and the switchboard in front of us.
A data centre commits its investment in one go and then lives with that hardware for years. A distributed network takes in improvements with every deployment. The gap compounds.
| Conventional data centre | Botnia Compute | |
|---|---|---|
| Access to energy | A new high-capacity connection, subject to the queue | Capacity already contracted in existing buildings, plus its own generation |
| Time to production | Years across planning, permits and construction | Months, permitted as an ordinary industrial installation |
| Land and construction | A plot and a newly built facility | Buildings that are already up and in use |
| Hardware renewal | The fleet is fixed for the whole cycle | Every new node arrives with the best equipment of the moment |
| Scaling | In large investment steps | Building by building, in line with real demand |
| Local impact | Concentrated in one place | Rent and infrastructure spread across local industry |
A qualitative comparison of deployment models. It is not an offer and not a commitment on timings.
For anyone buying compute, the network presents itself as a single resource: you request capacity, your workload runs and you are billed for use. Where each node physically sits is our problem.
No. The node's consumption is metered separately and paid by Botnia. Your supply and your billing stay exactly as they are. The node's capacity does not come out of yours: an increase is applied for on the same connection point, up to whatever the distribution company authorises.
Your capacity stays yours: the node's is separate, added capacity. And if you still needed more, electrical priority always belongs to the host: the compute load is reduced or shifted to other nodes in the network. That is precisely what the distributed topology allows.
Cooling is liquid and closed circuit, sized to sit alongside a working building. The surface depends on the installed capacity and is settled at the technical visit; if the module goes outside, it takes up not one metre of your productive floor.
Botnia. The equipment is ours, and installation, operation and maintenance are our responsibility. The host provides space; it operates nothing.
The contract covers succession and early exit. It is defined case by case in the negotiation, on the same terms as a long-duration roof lease.
No. If the roof allows it, we install it as part of the node. If you already have an installation, we look at how to integrate it.
Contracted capacity and square metres available. That is enough for the first filter, at no cost and with no commitment.