CyrusOne has partnered with European utility E.On to develop an on-site gas-fired power system at Cyrus’ FRA7 data center in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Preferred Partnership agreement will see E.On construct the IQ Energy Center, which is expected to have a capacity of 61MW at full buildout. The center will comprise multiple 4.5MW gas engine modules and is expected to come online by 2029.

The campus, currently under construction, already has an 81MW grid connection. However, according to Matt Pullen, managing director of Europe at CryrusOne, the 73-acre plot had “more land than power access.” As a result, CyrusOne had been actively on the lookout to increase power access to support a larger IT load at the data center.

“We’ve been in discussions with E.On for a while, looking for, if you like, the perfect opportunity to see if we could develop a partnership. And FRA7 was that perfect opportunity, because the land that we bought from BEOS is part of the WESTSIDE campus,” Pullen told DCD.

“Through this partnership with E.On, it looks as if we can increase the initial 81MW IT capacity to 126MW by having an element of local generation that will help enable the full development of the site,” Pullen added.

The onsite power system will permit CyrusOne to expand the facility’s total IT capacity to 126MW.

The engines will initially be powered by natural gas, but are capable of running on a 25 percent hydrogen blend, with the potential for full hydrogen conversion through future upgrades. The partners contend that, unlike large turbine systems seen in comparable deployments in the US market, this modular approach is designed to offer operational flexibility and redundancy.

In addition to supplying power, the system is being configured to improve energy efficiency and heat reuse. Waste heat from the engines will be used to drive absorption chillers, which will provide cooling for the data center. At full operation, up to 40MW of waste heat could be delivered to the local district heating network.

The integration of power, cooling, and heating into a single system is intended to meet new efficiency standards being introduced under EU and German regulations, including the Energy Efficiency Directive. CyrusOne and E.ON believe the model could be applied to other constrained markets in Europe, including London and Amsterdam.

“Data centers in the past have been base load, very static consumers of electricity, and by our solution, we are providing a high degree of flexibility that enables our customers and partners to grow and helps the overall energy transition, especially in those areas where the grid is very much constrained,” Marten Bunnemann, CEO of Energy Infrastructure Solutions at E.ON, said to DCD.

FRA7’s location in Frankfurt’s most connected availability zone makes it suitable for a range of workloads. Pullen described the project as offering “fungible capacity,” capable of supporting AI training, inference, and enterprise services. Therefore, the ability to bring additional capacity online was seen by CyrusOne as crucial in supporting the growth of customer demand in the region, especially as AI adoption grows.

CyrusOne is a Dallas-based data center developer, operating more than 55 data centers across the globe. The company has a significant presence across the European market. In Frankfurt, the company has six data centers in operation and development.

In April, it announced plans for a second data center in Milan, Italy. The data center is expected to deliver 54MW of IT capacity across 18,000 sqm (193,750 sq ft) of technical space – spanning six 9MW data halls.