Concurrent PowerBI Semantic Model refresh fails when model owner is Service Principal

Hi azruld ,

The issue appears to be linked to recent changes in Power BI, particularly with how refreshes are managed when using a Service Principal (SPN). If multiple semantic models owned by a service principal are refreshed simultaneously, they all fail after about 1 minute and 50 seconds with a retry limit error. However, refreshing the models one at a time, or using a user account as the owner, allows them to succeed—even if triggered at the same time. Since there are no related entries in the On-Premises Data Gateway logs, this suggests the failure happens at the Power BI service layer before reaching the data source.

This likely indicates a platform-level throttling or connection limit for service principals, especially when using the Enhanced Refresh API (API documentation). User accounts seem to have fewer restrictions. To prevent these errors, try triggering refreshes one after the other when using a service principal. Alternatively, distribute the refreshes across multiple service principals or assign ownership to a user account. Monitoring capacity and throttling with the Metrics App   is recommended for Premium or PPU capacity. For more information, refer to  Service Principal in Power BI – Limitations & Configuration and embed setup. If the problem persists, especially after a recent update, consider submitting a support case to Microsoft.

Regards,
Sreeteja