Published 2026-09-12 · Event 2026-08-25

EcoDataCenter announces a third Dalarna campus in Smedjebacken; English 150 MW is not in the Swedish notice

On 25 August 2026 EcoDataCenter published paired English and Swedish notices about land in Smedjebacken’s Röbacken industrial area. The Swedish text describes a 52-hectare option agreement, permits targeted for 2027 and first operation in 2029. The English text says a purchase agreement and “green light of an immediate 150MW.” Those are different wordings. Neither notice is a building permit, a commissioning certificate or a new Falun megawatt.

EcoDataCenter’s 25 August 2026 notices are the dated operator sources used here. The Swedish page says the municipality and the company have had a letter of intent since 2019 and that the company is now signing an option agreement to buy land. The purchase covers 52 hectares in the Röbacken industrial area. The ambition is to start construction as soon as building and environmental permits are in place, estimated during 2027. The first data center is expected to be in operation in 2029. Those are schedule and land-instrument sentences. An option is not a completed sale, and 2029 is a target.

The English page on the same date uses different verbs. It says EcoDataCenter has signed an agreement with Smedjebacken Municipality for the purchase of land for a third campus in Dalarna, following a letter of intent in place since 2019. It repeats the 52 hectares and the early-2027 permit expectation. It then adds a capacity sentence that does not appear in the Swedish notice: the campus has green light of an immediate 150MW with a credible opportunity to expand further. This register therefore records a language split. It does not convert the English 150 MW into a Swedish metric row, and it does not define the figure as IT load, facility load, reserved import or occupied load.

Local process reporting still treats the municipal votes as open. Siljan News on 1 September 2026 said a land-sale agreement had been prepared, that EcoDataCenter had already approved it, and that the municipal executive board and the municipal council still had to approve it. After municipal approval the company would have 18 months to obtain building and environmental permits before calling the option. This article does not treat a later Tuesday board meeting as documented. If a later primary protocol records a vote, that protocol can open a new row.

Heat is an intention, not a delivery. The Swedish operator notice says the parties will jointly develop projects to capture and use residual heat from the data center. That sentence belongs with other described-heat sources. It does not name a temperature, a pipe, a volume or a start date. It is not Falu Energi & Vatten’s pellet-drying sentence and not GleSYS’s 1 October 2020 Falkenberg delivery start.

Smedjebacken is a third EcoDataCenter geography in the operator’s own wording, after Falun and Borlänge. It must not be folded into Falun’s 41 MW annual-report sentence, Falun’s separate 80 MW available-power page, or Borlänge’s later construction-start notice. Job figures of 125–150 permanent roles at full build-out are company expectations. They are not a megawatt definition.

For a buyer the next documents are the current municipal decision, the signed option or sale if it exists, the plan map for Röbacken, the environmental and building-permit route, and any written network-owner paper. Ask which language version of the 25 August notice is being quoted. If someone uses 150 MW, which boundary do they mean, and why is it absent from the Swedish text?

DataCenterSweden records the 25 August 2026 pair as a reported third-campus land event. No Smedjebacken project identifier exists in this register yet, so no project row is attached. No coordinate is invented. The English 150 MW wording stays labelled as an undefined English-language claim.

Why it matters

A third Dalarna campus is a real operator signal. It is only safe if the option, the missing Swedish megawatt and the still-open municipal votes stay on separate lines.

What remains unknown

This file does not contain a council vote, a signed sale, a defined megawatt boundary, a grid paper, a construction start or a heat offtake. The English 150 MW sentence has no Swedish counterpart in the paired notice.

Sources