# Data centres have asked Italy’s grid for 100 GW, 1.7 times its peak. Lombardy’s 1.6 GW connects next > Data centres have asked Terna for more than 100 GW of grid connections, 1.7 times Italy's peak demand. In Lombardy, 1.6 GW is due to connect within weeks. Publisher: DC Market Insights Published: 2026-11-09 Last updated: 2026-11-09 Page: https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/news/data-centres-have-asked-italys-grid-for-100-gw-1-7-times-its-peak-lombardys-1-6-gw-connects-next ## Key takeaways - Data centres have asked Terna, Italy's grid operator, for more than 100 GW of connections across almost 600 projects, its chief executive Pasqualino Monti said on 14 October 2026 (Teleborsa). - That is about 1.7 times Italy's highest power demand this year, 57.98 GW in July (Il Nordest, citing Terna; our calculation). - Lombardy alone holds 316 requests for 48.6 GW, against a peak capacity of about 15 GW the region can guarantee; 14 large sites draw on 800 MW today (Terna at the Lombardy Regional Council, Il Giorno, 3 Nov 2026). - Only 1.6 GW, from 12 data centres, is in the final connection phase, about 3% of Lombardy's requests (Terna; our calculation). - A connection request costs a flat €2,500 whatever its size; the industry body IDA wants €500 per MW plus a bank guarantee, 20 times more for a 100 MW site (MF Milano Finanza, 14 Oct 2026; our calculation). Italy's grid has a data centre queue that is bigger than the country's own power system. Terna now holds more than 100 GW of connection requests from data centre projects, while Italy's highest demand this summer was just under 58 GW. Why now: on 2 November Terna told Lombardy's regional council that most of these requests will never be built, and the region is rewriting its five-month-old data centre law. Operators with real projects are stuck in the same line as land owners who, in the words of the industry association, only want to sell a plot. The fight this autumn is over who gets filtered out, and what it costs to stay in. **100+ GW** data centre connection requests to Terna, almost 600 projects (Terna CEO, 14 Oct 2026) **1.7x** requests vs Italy's 2026 peak demand of 57.98 GW (our calculation) **3%** of Lombardy's 48.6 GW of requests in the final connection phase (Terna; our calculation) ## How the queue got this big Five years ago the queue barely existed. Terna data reported by Fortune Italia on 24 August 2026 show data centre connection requests of 1 GW in 2021, 5.4 GW in 2023 and 31.28 GW in 2024. By August 2026 the total had reached 95.38 GW across 531 requests. Of those, 300 requests worth 58.7 GW were filed in the first eight months of 2026 alone, up 48.2% on the 215 requests and 39.6 GW filed in the same months of 2025. The queue kept growing after that. MF Milano Finanza reported on 23 September that Terna's data as of 31 August showed more than 100 GW, 6 GW more than in July. On 14 October Terna's chief executive confirmed the figure in public. > Today we have reached more than 100 GW of connection requests, for almost 600 initiatives. ***Pasqualino Monti** , Chief Executive, Terna (translated from Italian) — [Teleborsa, 14 Oct 2026](https://www.teleborsa.it/News/2026/10/14/terna-monti-oltre-100-gw-di-richieste-di-connessione-per-data-center-107.html)* Monti added that connection requests "far exceed" what projects can actually build, and called for a pragmatic approach. In a written statement to the energy regulator ARERA for its September 2026 hearings, Terna put the data centre queue at "about 100 GW", concentrated in the North and above all in Lombardy, and said the share that will actually be built "is still to be verified". *Figure 1. Data centre connection requests to Terna, Italy, GW. Source: [Terna data via Fortune Italia](https://www.fortuneita.com/2026/08/24/data-center-boom-delle-richieste-di-energia-in-italia-95-gw-in-attesa-di-connessione/), 24 Aug 2026; [Teleborsa](https://www.teleborsa.it/News/2026/10/14/terna-monti-oltre-100-gw-di-richieste-di-connessione-per-data-center-107.html), 14 Oct 2026.* ## What changed: Terna puts numbers on the gap The clearest picture came on 2 November, at a hearing of the Lombardy Regional Council's fifth commission, which is examining amendments the regional government has just approved to its data centre law. Mauro Caprabianca, head of regional planning at Terna, set out the Lombardy figures, as reported by Il Giorno on 3 November: - 316 active requests for new data centres in Lombardy, needing 48.6 GW of connection capacity if all were accepted. - At peak times the region can guarantee at most about 15 GW. Meeting every request would mean roughly quadrupling that. - The 14 large data centres already running have 800 MW of nominal connected capacity, and do not draw all of it. - Projects whose request for connection design Terna has accepted add up to 9 GW. - Twelve data centres with 1.6 GW are in the final connection phase, a "matter of weeks". > We have a nominal connected capacity of 800 megawatts. ***Mauro Caprabianca** , Head of Regional Planning, Terna (translated from Italian) — [Il Giorno, 3 Nov 2026](https://www.ilgiorno.it/cronaca/data-center-lombardia-300-richieste-k4a3hage)* Put side by side, the funnel is steep. Lombardy's requests are 3.2 times the peak capacity the region can guarantee and 61 times what its large data centres are connected for today. The 9 GW with an accepted design request is 18.5% of the regional queue. The 1.6 GW about to connect is 3.3% of it (our calculation). If those 12 sites come on line, Lombardy's large data centre connections triple, from 0.8 GW to 2.4 GW. *Figure 2. Lombardy: data centre grid requests against capacity, GW. Source: [Terna at the Lombardy Regional Council hearing, via Il Giorno](https://www.ilgiorno.it/cronaca/data-center-lombardia-300-richieste-k4a3hage), 3 Nov 2026.* | Stage (Lombardy) | GW | Share of requests | Multiple of connected today | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Requested (316 active files) | 48.6 | 100% | 61x | | Peak capacity the region can guarantee | about 15 | 31% | 19x | | Connection design request accepted | 9 | 18.5% | 11x | | Final connection phase (12 data centres) | 1.6 | 3.3% | 2x | | Connected today (14 large data centres) | 0.8 | 1.6% | 1x | Source: Terna figures presented to the Lombardy Regional Council, reported by [Il Giorno](https://www.ilgiorno.it/cronaca/data-center-lombardia-300-richieste-k4a3hage), 3 Nov 2026. Shares and multiples are our calculation. The 15 GW is the region's guaranteed peak capacity for all users, not a data centre allowance. Il Giorno's 316 files and 48.6 GW for Lombardy differ from MF Milano Finanza's 296 requests and 47.3 GW for Milan and its hinterland at 31 August; the bases differ, so we do not mix them. ## Who is hurting, and how much **Real projects stuck behind paper ones.** The national queue is about 186 times the 513 MW that all of Italy's 226 grid-connected data centres had at the time of Terna's August data, including sites on distribution networks and inside industrial plants (Fortune Italia; our calculation). Only 15 national requests, 1.88 GW, were at the most advanced stage then. Every serious developer waits in a line where, by the industry's own estimate, almost every request ahead of it is speculative. **The industry says 98% of the queue will never be built.** The Italian Data Centre Association (IDA) told MF Milano Finanza on 14 October that only 1-2% of requests will become real investments. It expects Italian capacity to reach 1 GW by 2028 and 2 GW by 2031. At the Lombardy hearing, IDA director general Floriano Monteduro said real demand would grow by only 2 GW over the next five years. Two gigawatts is 2% of the 100 GW queue (our calculation). Italy hosts only 4% of Europe's data centres, IDA says, though it has about 13% of the EU's population. **The grid operator has to plan for numbers it does not believe.** Terna told ARERA it wants to issue "overbooked" connection solutions for data centres and reserve capacity only for projects that can prove they are mature. It also wants the data centre process to follow the reform the February 2026 "DL Bollette" decree made for generation, which Terna says will free more than 200 GW of connection capacity and remove about 250 planned substations. **Households and industry carry the rest.** Italian demand is already rising. Terna's September report showed national demand of 27.8 TWh, up 6.5% on a year earlier and the 13th month of growth in a row; demand in the first nine months of 2026 rose by about 12 TWh (5.2%). The 1.6 GW in Lombardy's final phase, run at 80% load, would use about 11.2 TWh a year (our calculation): almost as much as all of Italy's demand growth in the first nine months of this year. | Region (Terna data, 31 Aug 2026) | Requests | GW requested | | --- | --- | --- | | Milan and hinterland | 296 | 47.3 | | Piedmont | 71 | 14.5 | | Lazio | 45 | 12.45 | | Apulia | 30 | 8.28 | | Emilia-Romagna | 41 | 6.14 | | Veneto | 24 | 5.54 | | **Six regions** | **507** | **94.2** | Source: Terna data as of 31 August 2026, reported by [MF Milano Finanza](https://www.milanofinanza.it/news/data-center-oltre-quota-100-gw-2718128), 23 Sep 2026. The six-region total is our sum; the national total at that date was above 100 GW. Milan's share fell below half of the national queue as Piedmont, Lazio and Apulia grew. ## The price of a place in line The root of the problem, the industry says, is that a place in the queue is almost free. A connection request costs €2,500, whether it is for 100 MW or 200 MW, IDA president Luca Beltramino told MF Milano Finanza. Paying Terna to design the connection works costs €50,000-70,000 more, according to the Lombardy hearing. IDA has filed a proposal with ARERA: €500 per MW to file a request, a bank guarantee of at least 50% of the cost of the connection bay (about €450,000), a full guarantee above 100 MW, and a connection contribution paid in stages. Its rule for defaulters is blunt. > Anyone who does not meet the financial commitments automatically loses the right to a connection. ***Luca Beltramino** , President, Italian Data Centre Association (IDA) (translated from Italian) — [MF Milano Finanza, 14 Oct 2026](https://www.milanofinanza.it/news/basta-speculatori-sui-data-center-2720639)* | Request size | Fee today | IDA proposal (€500/MW) | Increase | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 50 MW | €2,500 | €25,000 | 10x | | 100 MW | €2,500 | €50,000 | 20x | | 200 MW | €2,500 | €100,000 | 40x | | Whole 100 GW queue (~600 requests) | ~€1.5m | ~€50m | ~33x | Source: fee and proposal from [MF Milano Finanza](https://www.milanofinanza.it/news/basta-speculatori-sui-data-center-2720639), 14 Oct 2026; totals are our calculation and exclude the proposed bank guarantee of about €450,000 per bay and the €50,000-70,000 design fee. The proposal is not in force. Even at €500 per MW, a place in the queue is cheap next to the asset. A 100 MW request would cost €50,000 to file; the same site needs a power connection, buildings and equipment worth hundreds of millions. The guarantee matters more than the fee: it ties up real money for every speculative plot. ## The wider pattern: Europe's paper gigawatts Italy is the largest case so far of a pattern we have tracked across Europe this autumn. In Britain, data centres want about 73 GW of the grid, 1.6 times peak demand, and Ofgem has proposed a commitment fee of £237,500-712,500 per MW ([our analysis, 19 Oct](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/news/data-centres-want-73-gw-of-britains-grid-1-6-times-peak-demand-germanys-november-grid-vote-is-next)). In the Netherlands, data centres account for about 15 GW of grid waiting lists, 26 times what they use ([26 Oct](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/news/data-centres-want-15-gw-of-the-dutch-grid-26-times-what-they-use-a-national-plan-is-due-this-autumn)). Denmark put data centres last in a four-tier grid queue holding 16 GW of requests ([2 Nov](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/news/denmark-put-data-centres-last-in-its-grid-queue-16-gw-of-requests-get-answers-in-late-november)). Italy's ratio is the highest of the four: requests of 1.7 times national peak demand, against 1.6 times in Britain. Its filters are the weakest: Britain is consulting on a fee per MW, Denmark has a priority order in law, and Italy still charges a flat €2,500. The Lombardy law of June 2026 and Decree-Law 21/2026, which gave data centres a single permit procedure capped at 10 months, speed up permits. Neither ranks grid requests. ## What our data shows DC Market Insights tracks 8 named Italian projects from six operators (CyrusOne, Vantage, NTT DATA, Compass, QTS and CloudHQ), with 59 MW under construction and 534 MW planned, as of 9 November 2026. That 593 MW is about 0.6% of Terna's queue: the queue is roughly 169 times the projects we can tie to a named operator and a disclosed MW figure (DC Market Insights data, our calculation). Even the 1.6 GW in Lombardy's final connection phase is 2.7 times our tracked Italian pipeline, which tells us that some near-term projects have not yet been named publicly. Our policy tracker holds six Italian government actions, five in force, including the Lombardy law, its August implementing resolutions and the national single-permit procedure. ### What it means for operators, investors and vendors **Our view:** - **Operators:** treat a Terna request as an option, not a connection. Plan on the 9 GW with accepted design requests as the real Lombardy pipeline, not the 48.6 GW headline, and budget for a bank guarantee of about €450,000 per bay if ARERA adopts IDA's proposal. - **Operators:** move before the rules tighten. Projects already in Lombardy's 1.6 GW final phase gain the most from any filter that clears speculative files; projects at the request stage should prepare proof of land, permits and finance now. - **Investors:** value Italian land deals on grid stage, not on GW requested. With IDA expecting only 1-2% of requests to be built, a site with a 100 MW request and no accepted design is worth little more than the land. - **Investors:** look beyond Milan. Piedmont (14.5 GW), Lazio (12.45 GW) and Apulia (8.28 GW) hold more than a third of the national queue between them, and Milan's share has dropped below half. - **Vendors:** size Italian orders to the 2 GW the industry expects by 2031, not the 100 GW queue. The 1.6 GW connecting in Lombardy is the near-term order book for switchgear, cooling and backup power. For the numbers behind this analysis, see our [Italy Data Center Thermal Management Market](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/report/italy-data-center-thermal-management-market) report (US$710.76 million in 2025, DC Market Insights estimate), the [Italy Data Center Storage Market](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/report/italy-data-center-storage-market) report and the [Italy Data Center Racks Market](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/report/italy-data-center-racks-market) report. Italy's rules are tracked on our [Italy power and policy page](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/data/power-policy/italy); for other grid queues see our pages for the [Netherlands](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/data/power-policy/netherlands) and [Ireland](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/data/power-policy/ireland). ## What to watch next - **November 2026 (weeks):** 12 Lombardy data centres with 1.6 GW are due to complete their grid connection, which would triple the region's large data centre connections to 2.4 GW (Terna, 2 Nov). - **Late November 2026:** Terna's monthly report for October; September's came on 21 October. Watch demand growth and any update to the data centre queue (Terna). - **Not yet scheduled:** the Lombardy Regional Council's vote on the amendments to its data centre law, after the fifth commission's hearing of 2 November (Il Giorno). - **Not yet scheduled:** ARERA's response to IDA's proposal for a €500 per MW request fee and bank guarantees, and to Terna's request to overbook data centre connections (MF Milano Finanza; Terna). - **14 December 2026:** the European Commission's consultation on minimum performance standards for data centres closes (European Commission). - **Pending in the Senate:** the national data centre delegation bill (C. 1928-A), passed by the Chamber on 24 February 2026 (DC Market Insights policy tracker). ## Frequently asked questions ### How much grid capacity have data centres requested in Italy? More than 100 GW across almost 600 projects, Terna's chief executive said on 14 October 2026. That is about 1.7 times Italy's 2026 peak demand of 57.98 GW. Terna data showed 95.38 GW in August, up from 31.28 GW in 2024 and 1 GW in 2021. ### How many data centre requests are in Lombardy? Terna counted 316 active requests for 48.6 GW in Lombardy, against about 15 GW of peak capacity the region can guarantee. The 14 large data centres running there have 800 MW connected, and 12 more with 1.6 GW are in the final connection phase. ### How much of Italy's data centre grid queue will be built? The industry association IDA estimates only 1-2% of requests will become real investments, and expects about 2 GW of new demand in five years, 2% of the 100 GW queue. Terna told ARERA the realisation rate "is still to be verified". ### What does it cost to request a data centre grid connection in Italy? A flat €2,500 per request, whatever its size, plus €50,000-70,000 for Terna's connection design. IDA has proposed €500 per MW and a bank guarantee of about €450,000 per bay, which would make a 100 MW request cost €50,000 to file. ## Sources 1. [Terna, Monti: oltre 100 GW di richieste di connessione per data center](https://www.teleborsa.it/News/2026/10/14/terna-monti-oltre-100-gw-di-richieste-di-connessione-per-data-center-107.html), Teleborsa, 14 Oct 2026. 2. [Data center, in Italia richiesti oltre 100 GW. Ma Terna avverte](https://www.rivista.ai/2026/10/15/data-center-in-italia-richiesti-oltre-100-gw-ma-terna-avverte-non-tutti-i-progetti-diventeranno-realta/), Rivista.AI, 15 Oct 2026. 3. [Data center in Lombardia, oltre 300 richieste](https://www.ilgiorno.it/cronaca/data-center-lombardia-300-richieste-k4a3hage), Il Giorno, 3 Nov 2026. 4. [Data center in Lombardia, richieste per 48 giga](https://www.lachirico.it/2026/11/04/data-center-in-lombardia-richieste-per-48-giga-capacita-di-rete-da-quadruplicare/), LaChirico.it, 4 Nov 2026. 5. [Data center, boom delle richieste di energia: in Italia 95 GW in attesa di connessione](https://www.fortuneita.com/2026/08/24/data-center-boom-delle-richieste-di-energia-in-italia-95-gw-in-attesa-di-connessione/), Fortune Italia, 24 Aug 2026. 6. [Data center oltre quota 100 GW](https://www.milanofinanza.it/news/data-center-oltre-quota-100-gw-2718128), MF Milano Finanza, 23 Sep 2026. 7. [Basta speculatori sui data center](https://www.milanofinanza.it/news/basta-speculatori-sui-data-center-2720639), MF Milano Finanza, 14 Oct 2026. 8. [Audizione ARERA: memoria di Terna](https://www.arera.it/fileadmin/allegati/audizioni/pubbliche/26/21_-_Terna.pdf), ARERA public hearings, September 2026. 9. [Terna, consumi elettrici in crescita: a settembre +6,5%](https://www.borsaitaliana.it/borsa/notizie/teleborsa/economia/terna-consumi-elettrici-in-crescita-a-settembre-65-record-dal-2014-91_2026-10-21_TLB.html?lang=it), Teleborsa via Borsa Italiana, 21 Oct 2026. 10. [Caldo estremo spinge i consumi energetici, picco dell'anno a 57,98 GW](https://www.ilnordest.it/italia-ed-esteri/caldo-estremo-spinge-i-consumi-energetici-picco-dellanno-a-57-98-gw-d8fzi083), Il Nordest, July 2026. 11. [Data centres in Europe – minimum performance standards (Have your say)](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/19293-Data-centres-in-Europe-minimum-performance-standards_en), European Commission, open to 14 Dec 2026. 12. [Data Center Power & Policy in Italy](https://www.dcmarketinsights.com/data/power-policy/italy) and facilities tracker, DC Market Insights, 9 Nov 2026.