A Swedish energy firm is planning a data center development in central Finland.

The municipality of Lapinlahti this week announced that Helios Nordic Energy Finland Oy (Helios) is planning a new data center in the Alapitkä area of ​​Lapinlahti.

The project totals more than 80 hectares near the Alapitkä settlement and next to Fingrid Oyj’s Alapitkä substation. The site could reportedly host up to 500MW of capacity, and the site has previously been approved for an 80-100MW data center development.

Lapinlahti is a municipality in the Northern Savo region in central Finland, some 450km (279.6 miles) north of Helsinki.

Helios has submitted a zoning initiative regarding the development of the area, and the municipal board will discuss the zoning later this month. Construction could begin next year.

Helios is also set to build a solar plant in the area.

Aleksi Aalto, project developer at Helios, said: “There is currently a huge demand for data centers in Europe. In Finland, we have the trump cards to implement safe, high-quality, and reliable data centers. At the same time, this will bring jobs and new opportunities to many locations in Finland. Cooperation in Lapinlahti has been smooth, and we are hopeful about the development of our Alapitkä data center.”

Founded in 2019, Helios Nordic Energy has more than 100 solar projects in operation and development across the Nordics. The company has been owned by VINCI Group since 2024.

The firm is also planning a data center in the Tervamäki area of ​​Iisalmi, a town and municipality some 26km north of Lappeenranta.

“If implemented, the data center investment would have a significant impact on the vitality of the municipality. During the construction period, the project would bring hundreds of jobs to the municipality and even more than a hundred permanent jobs would be created,” added Henri Ruotsalainen, Mayor of Lapinlahti.

We put Finland’s growing data center market under the microscope in issue #60 of DCD>Magazine. Read the piece online here.