Gingerah Energy files 1GW off-grid data center in Western Australia

Gingerah Energy filed plans for a 1GW off-grid data center campus in Western Australia, paired with a 6.7GW renewable energy hub, Data Center Dynamics reported on Oct. 28.

The application for the Meridien Renewable Energy Hub and Data Centre went to the Australian National Environmental Protection Agency's EPBC portal. It covers the Frazier Downs pastoral lease, roughly 27,520 hectares about 100km south of Broome.

The hub would combine about 5.2GW of solar and 1.5GW of wind, with 5GW of battery storage and about 1.5GW of gas firming, feeding the campus and on-site substations.

For allocators, Meridien is a platform proposal to underwrite rather than a financed project, with anchor tenants and capital partners still to be assembled. Gingerah is not proposing to fund the build itself. Founder and CEO Jap van Hattum said the aim is "to establish an investment-ready infrastructure platform bringing together specialist energy providers, data center developers and anchor customers."

The first stage carries up to 240MW of IT load, with construction possibly starting in 2029 and full build-out targeted for 2038, according to Data Center Dynamics. The data centers would use closed-loop cooling to reduce water use.

Gingerah Energy is a joint venture of Longreach Capital Investment, the Karajarri Traditional Lands Association and Fugro Exploration, the Australian arm of Dutch geodata company Fugro. The Karajarri people own the land, and Gingerah signed an Indigenous Land Use Agreement for it two years ago.

Van Hattum said the location offers "potentially the lowest latency connectivity to Singapore of any location in Australia." The filing also comes as Victoria has pushed grid and generation costs onto data center developers, as Private Infrastructure Daily previously reported.