What Amsterdam's Full Power Grid Means for Servers Hosted There

Grid capacity in Noord-Holland since 2023

TenneT's high-voltage grid in Noord-Holland reached its maximum capacity for large users in October 2023, and since then a business asking for a new or bigger connection has joined a waiting list. TenneT's December 2024 notice said much of the province would get no extra room for ten years, and expected overloads from 2026 north of Beverwijk and around the Vijfhuizen high-voltage substation, an area that takes in south-west Amsterdam and the Zuidas.

The queue now reaches homes. Since 1 July 2026, a request for a new or heavier household connection in a full area goes on Liander's waiting list, with homes up to 3 x 35 A given priority as a basic need. Liander took 27,500 household requests for a heavier connection in the first five months of 2026, up from 18,000 in the same months of 2025 (NL Times).

Expected waits by sub-grid

Liander publishes an expected end date for each congested sub-grid. Its January 2026 update moved three that serve Amsterdam customers:

A data centre connection at Vijfhuizen has already been to court. On 29 April 2026 the court in Arnhem ruled for TenneT against Goodman, a developer that wanted a 70 MW connection there for a data centre near Schiphol. The court found the grid full and left Goodman on the waiting list; NL Times reported that the constraint could last until around 2035.

Amsterdam's rules for new data centres

Amsterdam and Haarlemmermeer paused new data centres in July 2019, then set growth budgets running to 2030: 670 MVA for Amsterdam and 750 MVA for Haarlemmermeer. Amsterdam announced its current stop in April 2025. It exempts projects that applied before 28 December 2023 and has been in force since 11 June 2025. Liander says the stop means it needs three fewer substations, about €125 million of work it no longer has to do.

Projects with older permits are still being built. A 78 MW data centre for Microsoft is going ahead on a permit granted about five years earlier, which the responsible minister said in January 2026 could no longer be undone (NOS). Equinix holds a permit for an 80 MW campus in Zuidoost but is building one of its four towers for now; the other three wait for TenneT substations due around 2036 (NL Times).

Every decision, with its date and source, is in our timeline of Amsterdam's data centre and grid decisions.

Effect on servers already hosted in Amsterdam

Congestion limits how much new or extra capacity the grid operators will contract. A facility keeps drawing up to the capacity it already holds under contract, so the constraint falls on anything that needs more: another rack, a denser one, or a new hall. Dense AI hardware reaches it first. NVIDIA gives 10.2 kW maximum for one eight-GPU DGX H100 system.

Two rules from the ACM, the Dutch energy regulator, decide who gets capacity when some does free up. The first, in force since April 2024, lets grid operators reclaim contracted capacity that medium- and high-voltage users in congested areas hold without using, unless the user shows it will need it within a reasonable time. The second is the prioritisation framework, in its current form since 1 January 2026, which puts congestion relievers, safety services and basic needs first. Telecommunications counts as a basic need. A data centre qualifies only through a joint request that a priority party initiates, for capacity used solely for that party's data (NLconnect).

On a multi-year colocation contract in Amsterdam, read the power allocation and price escalation clauses before the headline rate. If your plan depends on adding a lot of power in one place over the next few years, ask the provider, us included, whether that power is already under contract or still in a queue.

Our Amsterdam servers

Our Amsterdam servers run in an existing carrier-neutral facility near Schiphol, in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, and our network has a second point of presence at Nikhef in Amsterdam Science Park. The Amsterdam data centre page has the facility details.

Deploying on Serverside

Amsterdam dedicated servers are single-tenant machines on our own AS55285 network, provisioned in under a minute with DDoS mitigation always on, and the configurator shows what is in stock today. For game servers with a European player base, the game server latency guide covers why server location outweighs anything you can tune on the box.

FAQ

Will Amsterdam have power cuts because of this?

TenneT warned in December 2024 that without measures, supply reliability in the region would come under pressure and longer outages could follow. The waiting lists stop the grid operators contracting more load than the grid can carry. The operators also asked the 606 large users with connections above 1 MW whether they could shift consumption away from the peak; 66 said yes.

What is the difference between TenneT and Liander?

TenneT runs the national high-voltage transmission grid. Liander is the regional distribution operator for Noord-Holland, Gelderland, Friesland, Flevoland and parts of Zuid-Holland, and is the company most Amsterdam homes and businesses connect to. A new connection needs room at both levels, so congestion at either one puts it on a waiting list.

Is Haarlemmermeer covered by Amsterdam's data centre stop?

No. Amsterdam's policy covers the municipality of Amsterdam. Haarlemmermeer, which includes Schiphol-Rijk, has run its own policy since November 2020, and it allows no data centre growth after 2030. The grid limit applies to both: the Vijfhuizen substation that TenneT named in its December 2024 warning is in Haarlemmermeer.