Someone in the company I work for claims that a Power BI model loaded on a Premium capacity can grow much bigger than 12 GB when refreshed automatically (as in 'growing out of control if left unchecked'). I could not find any confirmation of this. Quite the opposite in fact.
Is this a myth or do I need to plan for such situations?
From a Microsoft representative:
There is no data volume limitation for a load for either DirectQuery or Import. However, when you publish a pbix file over 1GB to Power BI Service, you will get [a] limitation error message. That is to say, the data set of a single pbix file you are going to publish must be smaller than 1 GB. Power BI Premium supports uploads of Power BI Desktop (.pbix) files that are up to 10 GB in size. Once uploaded, a dataset can be refreshed to up to 12 GB in size. To use a large dataset, publish it to a workspace that is assigned to Premium capacity.
This post references this documentation:
Depending on the SKU, Power BI Premium supports uploading Power BI Desktop (.pbix) model files up to a maximum of 10 GB in size. When loaded, the model can then be published to a workspace assigned to a Premium capacity. The dataset can then be refreshed to up to 12 GB in size
