To recap how we got here:
- The Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is the largest consumer of electricity in New Zealand
- The international mining company that owns it occasionally threaten to shut down the operation, culling ~100 good jobs, unless Meridian gives them basically free power.
- Public pressure means Meridian acquiesces to lower prices and the govt gives them subsidies.
- Everyone’s electricity gets more expensive: $200 more per year
Now:
- DataGrid got consent from local neighbours after working with neighbours. Likely before Benn Jordan’s video
- DataGrid will be competing for electricity (which may further increase electricity prices?)
- Data centres aren’t famous for employing heaps of people
- It looks like if you live in Greymouth your internet might get shit-hot fast in the next decade
I’m not 100% against data centres. I do believe this is happening much more quietly than it should. They had already got consent for it before it was really published in the news / I heard about it (I do live under a hermit rock).
The data centre is owned by a foreign company. Presumably the profits will go off-shore. So, we’re going to pay more for our own electricity and some investors in Singapore will get more rich. It probably will create 10 local jobs though, so, there’s that.
If the govt is giving out subsidies, I’d much rather see it go to education to train the next wave of computer scientists that will figure out how to make the “actually useful” AI tools much more energy efficient.
Thanks for the summary!
I’m curious why the artists impression doesn’t contain a roof absolutely covered in solar panels. Surely this would be pay for itself relatively quickly? And also hedges the risk of dry years impacting hydro.
It could be as simple as the artist couldn’t be arsed adding them.
But the amount of energy you’d get from rooftop solar would be minute compared to what the facility would use, and they may simply decide it’s not worth the hassle.
THese days any solar installation would easily pay for itself, so long as they are paying proper prices for power. It doesn’t matter if they are using many MW of power and the solar only produces hundreds of kW, it would still easily be worth the cost and pay for itself in a few years. And I be it would be mentioned if they were going to put on solar, since that would be the main concern of many people.
My thoughts are that it must be one of three things, either:
- They are getting super cheap power, subsidised by other power users such as what happens with Tiwai point
- Their location is actually really bad for solar generation (may be true considering its in Southland)
- The infrastrucure design is a problem
For that last point, it could be something like they use a thin roof to let heat out, and adding solar panels would require a thicker roof which would require more electricity to cool which would mean solar is no longer viable.
But the comments on this reddit post (about a Hetzner data centre) say that newer data centres are having solar installed, so it’s unusual this one doesn’t.
I read they inked a deal for 140 MW, which would require ~300 hectares of panels to generate. The 78,000sq m facility is about ~8 hectares. So, that would generate about 4-5 MW. They should definitely do panels, even just for the PR / optics.
Mercury and Datagrid said in a press release that Datagrid has signed a 15-year “140-megawatt (MW) long-term power purchase option agreement” with Mercury.
and later it says:
Transpower expected 1300MW of new projects (generation and battery storage systems) to be commissioned in 2026, increasing capacity by around 13% nationwide.
Mercury chief executive Stewart Hamilton told the Herald his company’s new wind farm in Southland “will provide some of that power”.
Kaiwera Downs will have around 180MW capacity once its second stage goes live. “But the wind only blows about 40% of the time, which brings that down.”
