Comtel will build a data centre at Figline Valdarno near Florence, reported on 13 August, inside the H2-Era Green Valley complex led by Ge-Group and powered by an 84 MW solar plant, with waste heat sold to farming operations on the same site1. Total investment in the complex runs to €170m.
Tuscany is not a European data-centre cluster, and the siting logic here is generation rather than latency. A developer that brings its own solar and an on-site heat customer arrives at a connection negotiation owing the grid far less, which is the arrangement Australian and Irish regulators have spent this month trying to induce by rule. Comtel has reached it commercially, on a site where the neighbouring agriculture supplies the heat demand that makes recovery worth plumbing.
Solar at 84 MW nameplate delivers a fraction of that as a daily average in central Italy, so the grid connection and the complex's hydrogen ambitions still carry the load the panels do not. Ireland's regulator reopened connections on exactly these terms, renewable supply and on-site generation written into the offer, and Comtel has arrived with both already in hand.
