Property developer the Wirth Group has announced plans to build a hyperscale data center in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Known as ‘Engrida,’ the facility will be built on an industrial park outside the town of Philippsburg in the west of the country and has received preliminary approval from the municipal council. The requisite grid connection capacity of 707MW for the site has also been agreed between grid operator TransnetBW and the Wirth Group

“Philippsburg supplied Baden-Württemberg with electricity for four decades,” a spokesperson for the project told DCD. “With Engrida, we are bringing one of the most valuable parts of Germany’s grid infrastructure back online - this time in the service of digital sovereignty - while simultaneously returning the data center’s waste heat to local households.”

The total area being developed encompasses 260,000 sqm (about 26 hectares) of the Philippsburg Industrial Park, the spokesperson added. Though no information has been released about the precise size of the data center, Engrida will reportedly be large enough to encompass not only a former Goodyear tire factory at the site, but also the nearby decommissioned Philippsburg Nuclear Power Plant.

Though developed by the Wirth Group, the project is also awaiting a major investor. In an interview with SWR, Philippsburg’s mayor, Stefan Martus, said that the town is primarily interested in attracting German or European companies as partners (a project spokesperson confirmed separately to DCD that investors from outside the EU are also welcome, provided they pay tax in Germany). The municipality will also benefit from a district heating system siphoning waste heat from Engrida’s server racks.

Founded in 1997, the Wirth Group is primarily known for its real estate investments in the renewable energy sector.

The choice of Philippsburg as a location for its Engrida project appears largely linked to the town’s substantial electricity transmission infrastructure, and not its clout as a data center hub (the town currently hosts no such facilities, but seven are located in nearby Karlsruhe, according to DataCenterMap). Plans have also been announced for a battery energy storage system (BESS) in the town.

Proposed by power company EnBW, the facility will have a storage capacity of 800MWh and is expected to be completed by 2027.

Learn more about the data center market in Switzerland and the wider DACH region, and meet with other executives and experts at the DCN Zurich event later this year.