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<\/p>\nOn a cattle station deep in the Northern Territory outback, roughly 683km south of Darwin, a Singapore-headquartered developer wants to build one of the largest data centres in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n
The plan leans on a resource the region has in abundance and the electricity grid does not reach out to supply: gas.<\/p>\n
Energy North lodged the proposal, called Project Ares, with Australia\u2019s federal environment department in June, and it is now open for public comment.<\/p>\n
The off-grid campus would sit at Murranji Station in the gas-rich Barkly region, near the Beetaloo basin, and run on a mix of\u00a0gas-fired power, solar, and batteries. It arrives as Australian regulators tighten the\u00a0energy rules\u00a0around AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The numbers are large and, in one important place, unsettled. Energy North expects to invest about AU$11.9 billion in the first phase alone, according to Data Center Dynamics.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg, which reported the region\u2019s app<\/a>etite for the scheme, put the full project at around $28 billion, a figure that has not surfaced in any other outlet and whose currency and build-out stage the report does not spell out.<\/p>\n The first phase would deliver 1 gigawatt of computing capacity, built in two 500MW stages, with the campus designed to scale beyond 5GW over time.<\/p>\n Powering it would fall to roughly 1,038MW of gas-fired generation, described as hydrogen-ready, alongside 3GW of solar and 16GWh of battery storage.<\/p>\n The data centre halls would occupy about 90 hectares; the site as a whole runs to some 19,150 hectares, with the solar farm alone sprawling across as much as 7,000.<\/p>\n Building behind the meter, entirely off-grid, sidesteps a problem that is starting to bite closer to the coast.<\/p>\n Grid operators have warned that data-centre capacity around western Sydney is close to exhausted, pushing developers inland toward cheap land and, increasingly, dedicated power of their own.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s A$25 billion\u00a0commitment and a run of hyperscale plans have made Australia one of the busier markets in the region, and the Territory, with more sun and space than customers, is now fielding a share of them.<\/p>\n Project Ares has been awarded Commonwealth Major Project Status, which streamlines federal coordination but stops well short of approval.<\/p>\n The Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority is assessing the referral, and the project still needs a decision under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act before it can break ground.<\/p>\n Energy North is owned by Raggiana Global and led by Scott Criddle, a former chief executive of the engineering contractor Decmil.<\/p>\n The company describes itself as an independent Australian green-energy developer, and frames the gas component as a bridge, generation for reliability that is meant to give way to renewables as the site matures.<\/p>\n Nvidia-backed data centres\u00a0elsewhere in the country are making similar promises about cleaning up over time.<\/p>\n The gas itself has a ready source. The Beetaloo basin beneath the Barkly has long been pitched by Canberra as the centrepiece of a gas-led recovery, and a data centre that consumes its own supply on site turns a stranded resource into a customer.<\/p>\n That logic is part of what makes the remote Territory, thinly populated and short on grid, suddenly attractive to hyperscale developers.<\/p>\n It also sharpens the tension in the pitch, since a campus sold on eventually running clean would begin life burning gas at close to a gigawatt.<\/p>\n A final investment decision is targeted for 12 to 18 months after approvals land, with the first phase built in a similar window after that.<\/p>\n Project Ares is one of roughly a dozen data-centre proposals now lodged across the Territory, alongside Energy North\u2019s own Project Sol, a green hydrogen and ammonia venture at an earlier stage.<\/p>\n Whether the outback can host that much computing, on power that is meant to clean up as it goes, is the question the next 18 months will begin to answer.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n