A company in Singapore is proposing an ambitious idea for Australia’s Northern Territory: an off-grid data centre powered by 3 gigawatts (GW) of solar, 1 GW of gas and a whopping 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery storage.
Project Ares is proposed for construction on the Murranji Station, which was bought last year for $44 million by the Northern Territory’s largest landowner, Viv Oldfield, several hours north up the Stuart Highway from Suncable’s 10 GW and 20 GW solar proposals.
The proponent, Energy North, wants to cover between 6,000 and 7,000 hectares of land with solar, and build a “hydrogen-ready” gas plant – a proposal that has drawn the ire of Greenpeace which says it would more than double fossil gas generation in the territory.
“This hyperscale project proposes massive new off-grid gas infrastructure, making a mockery of the federal government’s unenforceable ‘expectations’ that data centres will cover their own power use with renewables,” said Greenpeace campaigner Solaye Snider.
“This proposal also raises serious questions about where this new gas would come from. Could it come from fracking the Beetaloo? Communities deserve to have the full picture before this project is approved.”
Federal guidelines agreed to by most state and territory energy ministers in March require data centres to bring their own clean energy generation and/or storage.
Energy North’s EPBC referral says it needs the gas power station to provide firming for the solar plant.
The data centre will cover a massive 90 hectares of land, and be built in two phases of 500 megawatts (MW) of IT demand each.
The whole project would have a footprint of 19,150 hectares.
Energy North also has another project, which is not included in the EPBC referral lodged in June and dubbed Project Sol, where it wants to build another 2 GW of solar and another battery to support a 4.7 million tonne per year green hydrogen plant in Darwin, for export.
Daniel Hunter, who is leading development of both projects, says they plan to develop both data centre and ammonia projects rather than to package for on-sale.
“We’re funded through the current development phase,” he told Renew Economy.
“Project Ares is currently in the public comment phase of its EPBC referral. The timeframe from here depends on the Commonwealth’s decision on whether the project is a controlled action and on the Northern Territory EPA’s assessment pathway, so it isn’t something we can put a fixed date on.
“We’re working closely with both regulators to progress the assessments as efficiently as the statutory processes allow.”
The Energy North website says it’s aiming for a final investment decision for the data centre-solar project within 12-18 months after all approvals are in.
The idea of putting a massive data centre in the remote Northern Territory is not new – Suncable is actively pitching for data centre clients to set up near its solar projects – but this is the first very large-scale data centre-first project for the area to hit the federal planning queue.
There are 12 proponents currently looking at the Northern Territory for data centre developments, drawn by the subsea cable linking Australia directly with Singapore, according to an ABC report this week.
Regional data centres haven’t been tried yet in Australia, but there is a lot of interest among electricity generators and transmission companies to nudge this business away from cities and into the hinterlands.
Hunter says they have “commercial interest” in the data centre and are talking to possible customers, but they’re in the early stages, still.
Green hydrogen and ammonia exports are a tricky sell in Australia, after much publicised failures and exits from the likes of Fortescue, and BP pulling out of the massive Australian Renewable Energy Hub in the Pilbara.
But Energy North is “clear-eyed” that it’s a very early stage market, Hunter says.
“Project Sol sits at the pre-FEED stage [where a concept is tested for feasibility], and we’re deliberately using this period to de-risk it rather than commit significant capital before conditions support it, so we’re positioned to move quickly as the market matures,” he says.
“On the 2028 [FID] date [on the project website], we treat that as indicative only and it will move with the market; a final investment decision will follow funding and a mature offtake market, not a date.”
The data centre project is expected to have consequences for eight endangered and threatened species, and draw up to 4 billion litres of water a year, according to the EPBC referral.
The greater bilby is the only mammal, but reptiles include the northern blue-tongued skink and plains death adder.
The grey falcon and four wetland birds which are known to use wetlands in the Northern Territory make up the remainder of the list, the sharp-tailed sandpiper, curlew sandpiper, Australian painted snipe and common greenshank.
But this is a preliminary list given the project is still in early concept design and no field surveys have been done yet.
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