Method
What gets checked,
and what we cannot check yet.
Most brokerage is a directory with a phone number attached. The part that decides whether a shortlist is worth anything happens before the shortlist exists: establishing what a facility has actually been granted, rather than what it is willing to put in a brochure. This page is that process, written down — including the parts of it that do not work yet.
The unit
A substation, not a region.
Dutch grid operators publish availability per service area, in four states per direction: available without a queue, limited availability, under investigation with a queue, and shortage with a queue. The area is defined by a named substation.
That is a finer unit than most procurement uses. "Is there power in the Randstad" has no answer. "What is the position of this postcode's service area" does — and two sites ten kilometres apart routinely land in different states.
So the substation is the unit we work in. A postcode resolves to a named service area through a public lookup, and that is where the questions start rather than where they stop.
The sequence
Four things happen before a name reaches you.
- 01
Resolve the location to its service area
Postcode to named substation. This is the cheap step and it is the one most procurement skips, which is why briefs arrive specifying a region that contains three incompatible grid situations.
- 02
Separate granted from marketed
We ask the operator what has been granted and when it energises, not what the site plan shows. A facility can market capacity that exists on a drawing and not in a signed connection agreement. Discovering that at contract stage costs a quarter.
- 03
Put the answer in a band, with the source
Capacity comes back as a band — under 1 MW, 1 to 5, 5 to 15, above 15 — with the source named. Never a single confident number. The exact figure comes out of the conversation with the grid operator, and that conversation is where the broker earns anything.
- 04
Disqualify in writing, with the reason
Facilities that cannot answer in writing are flagged on the shortlist rather than quietly dropped. You see the gap and decide whether the price compensates. Some do.
The limits
What this method does not give you.
-
Not a live capacity map
We do not hold a real-time picture of every substation in the country, and neither does anyone else selling you one. Availability data refreshes on a published cadence, and a number that is a quarter old is a number that is a quarter old.
-
Not contracted capacity per site
What a specific building is contracted for is very probably not public. That is why the answer is a band and not a figure, and why we say so before you ask.
-
Not a legal opinion
Where you need a formal scoping position — NIS2 status, DORA scope, a regulator-facing answer — we point you at counsel. We have specific recommendations in NL, BE, DE and FR.
-
Not certification
No body certifies a facility against the tier framework after it is built, other than the Uptime Institute's certification of a constructed facility. Anything else is operator attestation, and we label it as such.
Who does this
Nick Aldewereld.
Datacenter Broker is run from Amsterdam by one person. That is deliberate rather than a stage of growth: a brokerage that survives on being believed cannot afford a layer between the person who checked something and the person who tells you about it.
It also sets the ceiling honestly. There is a limit to how many engagements run at once, and when the answer is that we cannot take yours, you get that answer in two business days rather than a holding pattern.
What that means in practice
- The person who screens the facility is the person who writes the shortlist.
- Every provider signs the same written referral agreement at the same commission rate. Ranking is not for sale.
- No free consultations, no free assessments. The rates are published.
- Where an advisory engagement could lead to a brokered placement, only one fee applies — usually whichever is lower for you.
Next step
Put a real requirement through it.
Submit an anonymized RFQ and you will get a written answer within two business days — including the answer that we are not the right route for what you need.