This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
SPECIALIST investment manager Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners will develop a $2.5 billion renewables powered data centre and battery storage project in Brisbane, which is set to become one of the largest in the southern hemisphere.
The 800 MW Capacity campus, Supernode will connect Brisbane directly to the global Cloud for the first time and support the development of a digital economy in the sunshine state.
“Supernode is the latest example of our strategy to make impactful and ‘hard to repeat’ investments that help decarbonise energy intensive data centre operations using renewable power solutions,” said David Scaysbrook, co-founder and managing partner at Quinbrook.
The centre will sit around 30km out from the CBD, adjacent to the South Pine substation at Brendale, the heart of the Queensland Electricity Network, which offers high levels of power supply access and redundancy with three separate high voltage transmission connections.
“Brendale is a truly unique location in the Pacific region and is well deserving of the ‘Supernode’ title. Brendale follows close on the heels of our recent investment in Texas creating a similar 800 MW green data centre campus at Temple, near Austin, the initial phase of which became operational last month,” added Scaysbrook.
The project will be built at a 30-hectare site, with Quinbrook having recently gained approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board and the Moreton Bay Regional Council, enabling the delivery of a multi-tenant campus of up to four hyperscale data centres.
The digital infrastructure project will see critical energy and data storage capacity powered by renewable energy projects across Queensland, which will see data customers significant cost savings and the ability to grow capacity as demand grows.
“Queensland can now compete more aggressively with the rest of Australia on the fundamentals of cost, sustainability of operations and latency in order to attract leading data storage operators and create the necessary foundations for the next digital age,” said Scaysbrook.
The campus will also intersect the under construction Torus dark fibre data cable, which is set to connect the city to the international sub-sea cable at Maroochydore from Guam.
“With Supernode we will help attract new digital industries to come and flourish here and prosper sustainably by using locally produced, low cost, carbon-free renewable power and excellent data connectivity,” added Scaysbrook.
Quinbrook have also lodged a code assessable planning application for a 2,000 MWh Batter Energy Storage System, which is set to be located within the Supernode precinct.
“As Queenslanders, the founders of Quinbrook are delighted that we can play our part in helping support the power grid at a critical stage of the State’s energy transition when prices are high and volatility is rife,” said Scaysbrook.
This new storage system will address Queensland’s recently identified critical stability issues within its power grid.
“This is the critical communications infrastructure needed by progressive industry in this State and it represents a competitive advantage in achieving Net Zero operations at low cost that may become the envy of competing economies the world over,” concluded Scaysbrook.
This is just the latest major energy to come to the state, with CS Energy announcing plans to install a grid-scale battery near Queensland’s Chinchilla in the Western Downs region and Fortescue Future Industries set to make Central Queensland home to the world’s largest green energy hydrogen plant