A Gas-Rich Outback Station Could Host a $28bn Off-Grid AI Data Centre
Energy North Wants to Build One of the Southern Hemisphere’s Largest AI Data Centres in the Northern Territory, Powered by Its Own Gas, Solar, and Batteries Rather Than the Grid.
On 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. The plan leans on a resource the region has in abundance and the electricity grid does not reach: gas.
Energy North lodged the proposal, called Project Ares, with Australia’s federal environment department in June, and it is now open for public comment. 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:
- Gas-fired power
- Solar
- Batteries
It arrives as Australian regulators tighten energy rules around AI infrastructure. The numbers are substantial:
- Energy North expects to invest about AU$11.9 billion in the first phase alone, according to Data Center Dynamics.
- Bloomberg put the full project at around $28 billion, a figure not corroborated elsewhere.
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. Powering it would be:
- Approximately 1,038MW of gas-fired generation, described as hydrogen-ready.
- 3GW of solar
- 16GWh of battery storage
The data centre halls would occupy about 90 hectares; the site as a whole spans some 19,150 hectares, with the solar farm alone covering up to 7,000.
Building behind the meter, entirely off-grid, sidesteps a problem that is starting to bite closer to the coast. Grid operators have warned that data-centre capacity around western Sydney is close to exhausted, pushing developers inland toward cheap land and dedicated power of their own.
Microsoft’s A$25 billion commitment 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.
Project Ares has been awarded Commonwealth Major Project Status, which streamlines federal coordination but stops well short of approval. 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.
Energy North is owned by Raggiana Global and led by Scott Criddle, a former chief executive of the engineering contractor Decmil. 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.
Nvidia-backed data centres elsewhere in the country are making similar promises about cleaning up over time. 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.