Acciona buys into Segovia data center and its grid rights

Acciona has acquired a 50 percent stake in Ignis Data Epta, the vehicle created in 2024 to develop a data center in Spain's Segovia province, and the deal also covers the joint acquisition of an adjacent solar plant designed to meet the facility's electricity needs with renewable energy, according to Data Center Dynamics. The asset that matters, though, is the paperwork: grid access and connection permits for the project were processed earlier through two Ignis subsidiaries, and the deal now formalizes the companies' joint presence in the complex.

Until now, Ignis Data Epta sat wholly inside Ignis P2X, the data center platform that IGNIS runs with KKR, and Acciona's purchase leaves Ignis with the other half. The corporate structure is plain joint-venture math, but the strategic arithmetic is wider, because Acciona, chaired by José Manuel Entrecanales, is pursuing a goal of 2GW of data center capacity through Acciona Data Centers, a dedicated unit carved out of the group's Construction division less than two years ago.

Segovia follows a deal Acciona already has with Apto for the data center campus Apto is developing in Fuenlabrada, outside Madrid, an agreement that carries 82MW of grid access and connection and a long-term power purchase agreement tied to a 94MW solar plant that IGNIS developed and built. The outline is identical: a renewable plant placed beside the data center, with the power rights stitched into the project from the start.

PWD has argued that the grid is the new land and that data center deals now price power rights before tenants. Segovia fits. The adjacent solar plant is not a green amenity; it is the fuel supply, sized to serve the load on site and described in the announcement as the source of the facility's renewable electricity. That arrangement ties the data center's electricity supply to a generation asset on the same site, rather than leaving it to the merchant market and someone else's transmission line, and buying half of the project therefore buys half of a grid connection and half of a solar resource, with the data center functioning as the offtaker that justifies both.

A 50/50 split gives Acciona exposure to a project that already has its permits without taking control, a reasonable posture for a company whose 2GW goal spans multiple locations—spread capital across several queue positions rather than bet the whole target on one greenfield site. On the developer side, IGNIS and KKR gain a partner with a construction background and an energy balance sheet, without surrendering their half of the upside.

The server hall remains essential: a grid connection without a tenant produces nothing, and the data center is what turns permits into cash flow. In the Spanish buildout, though, grid access is the long pole, the piece that can take years and stop a project no matter how strong leasing demand is, and Acciona is buying that piece in Segovia rather than starting the permitting clock again.

Data Center Dynamics' account does not give the capacity of the Segovia data center or its solar plant, and no financial terms appear in the announcement: the concrete figures in the Fuenlabrada precedent are 82MW of grid access and 94MW of solar, both describing energy rather than floor area or racks. The disclosed metrics in these deals are moving with the asset that is actually scarce.

The Segovia transaction is also a template for how Iberian data center capacity will get built in the next cycle: the developer brings the project, the permits, and the renewable plant, while Acciona brings a balance sheet and a data center business that needs projects to acquire. On the evidence of Fuenlabrada and now Segovia, the model is one joint venture at a time, each anchored by solar and grid access—an assembly line that may be slower than ground-up construction but buys the asset that actually constrains the market.

Acciona is effectively buying grid positions and attaching solar to them, a sound way to chase its 2GW capacity goal in a market where the scarce input is the connection itself. The project is small enough to escape attention; the structure it uses is the one to track.