Pantheon Data Centre Will Consume as Much Electricity as a Third of Croatia

November the 4th, 2026 – The deeply contested Pantheon data centre in Topusko is edging closer to the start of construction despite most being against the facility that will use as much electricity as a third of Croatia. Representatives of the Croatian Transmission System Operator (HOPS) and the investor in the Pantheon AI data centre in Topusko announced at a panel of the Green Energy Fair that they expect the contract for connection to the electricity transmission network to be signed in November. Poslovni reports that at the panel dedicated to data centres as new challenges for the electricity system, Pantheon project manager Mario Gudelj recalled that HOPS had previously accepted Pantheon’s study for connection to the network back in July this year, and that the signing of the contract is expected in November. many are against pantheon’s construction The contract with HOPS will enable the future controversial data centre in Topusko to receive a stable power supply of 1 GW (gigawatt) or 1,000 MW (megawatts). HOPS connection manager Igor Šumonja said that the current system load for all of Croatia stands at around 2,000 to 3,000 MW, and that connecting such a consumer will increase the load by an entire third. This is deeply concerning to the vast majority who are against the construction of harmful and environmentally catastrophic data centres. “HOPS has approached this seriously and we know that it requires the construction of four new powerful 400-kilovolt transmission lines approximately 300 kilometres long, and the investor will build and pay all the costs of connecting to the network and nothing will be borne by HOPS and the system. In addition to them, we have another 1,600 to 1,700 requests for data centres, but of much lower power than Pantheon,” Šumonja claimed. As the start of construction of this largest data centre campus in Croatia and the region is planned for 2027, and the start of operations in 2029, Gudelj believes that the contract with HOPS will be signed soon, as well as that the spatial plan in Sisak-Moslavina County will be adopted and the environmental impact study accepted, because without that they cannot start working. “The spatial plan is a more complex story than HOPS because there have been amendments and additions to that plan, for which a public discussion is now underway, but we believe that all those processes in the county will be completed by February or the beginning of March,” Gudelj said. claims that “pantheon is so different” fall on the deaf ears of an increasingly concerned public When asked whether he fears that something could ‘get stuck’ at that discussion and because of the citizens regarding this project, he replied that they are not afraid because Pantheon is “so different and brings so many benefits to society, the state and the local community that there is no reason for it to get stuck”, and that in all public appearances he emphasises that they cannot take a single step without satisfying both the residents and the requirements binding from the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Collaborator on the project Antonio Gužvinec from the company Parsec Lab explained that this future AI campus will also be powered by energy from a solar power plant and battery systems, because the power density of the ‘cabinets’ with servers in them is significantly higher than in ordinary data centres, which is why they also need stronger cooling systems since the processors work practically constantly. Luka Majić, product manager of the Croatian representative office of the American company Vertiv Croatia, which deals with data centre infrastructure and is also a collaborator on the project, highlighted the growing interest in investments in data centres due to the growth in demand for AI. He announced that in Croatia the company will increase the number of employees by 200, from the current 650, because they have become Vertiv’s global centre of expertise. Gudelj further emphasised that Pantheon will allegedly not buy energy that is currently consumed on the Croatian market. Regarding the question of whether all this will lead to an increase in the price of electricity in Croatia, Šumonja from HOPS said that they do not set prices, so he cannot say anything about that either. On the question of cooling the centre, Majić from Vertiv said that in data centres a water cooling system is completely standard and that there are several models that are applied for this. “pantheon won’t expect the topusko spa water” – residents don’t believe it Gudelj repeated his earlier claims that Pantheon will not affect the waters in the Topusko spas, nor the water supply system. He also repeated the announcement that there will be “around 3,500 jobs” in Pantheon, of which 1,500 will be from the beginning due to construction and other jobs, including three shifts of firefighters that they will pay for, and their goal is for at least around 500 employees to also live in Topusko, which is why they plan to build apartments as well. “All in all, Pantheon’s footprint on the local community in the county area and beyond, economically, sociologically and democratically, is much greater than the damage to the environment will be. Care will be taken to improve the roads, noise, so that we do not burden the water chemically and so on,” Gudelj claimed, but many aren’t buying his words. He also emphasised that Pantheon will apparently pay HOPS around 80 million euros annually for network fees, which is practically HOPS’s annual investment cycle, to which Šumonja from HOPS said that before Pantheon enters the network, they will test them for at least two years, as well as other customers. The post Pantheon Data Centre Will Consume as Much Electricity as a Third of Croatia appeared first on Total Croatia .