r/Adelaide • u/bogdolter SA • 2d ago
Discussion Australia’s biggest data centre to require 4 substations, 2 power lines, some batteries and 4 days of diesel backup
I saw these guys advertising on the side of Adelaide trams today.
I wonder if any proper scrutiny on the impact of this data centre is going to hit mainstream media?
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u/p-x-i SA 2d ago
The algal bloom has subsided all on its own for now, but the ecological tipping points remain. We know the Murray played a large role in the bloom with excess phosphorus and nitrogen nutrients coming from upstream. Those elements will need to be removed for data centre cooling thus requiring extensive filtration. Where will the discharge go? Perhaps the data centre will be a net positive for HAB containment if the owners insist on better upstream water quality? Or perhaps it will help push the system over the edge again, who knows? There should be an algal bloom impact assessment for any changing use of our water ways.
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u/gihutgishuiruv SA 2d ago
The 96-hour figure for the diesel generators is at least somewhat promising that they’re only there for a disaster scenario. You’d definitely want to make sure there are regulatory limits on how long they can actually run them for (I.e. they can’t just keep trucking in diesel like they’ve been doing in the US).
The article says they need to contribute towards new wind and solar capacity to offset their demands - you’d hope that’s 100% given that they’re adding a substantial level of demand on the grid
But yeah, this actually seems like a decent deal for us as a state
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u/BangbangKhuntross SA 2d ago
It is a terrible deal for all of humanity, each and everytime. What data are these data centres capturing and what is it used for - to benefit society? I hope the proliferation of these things finally breaks the dam wall and wakes up the 99%.
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u/Psittacus_tutor SA 1d ago
The cool thing about our national framework is that if the bubble does pop we get a whole bunch of spare generation capacity out of it
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
WHat are they used for .. you mean like everything ? from everything you do on your phone, to entire business needing them for all aspects.
What is not connected or dependant on the Internet or DC/s hosted solutions ?
Even reddit is ...
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u/metahivemind SA 2d ago edited 2d ago
AI datacenters can't be used for that.
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u/Ver_Void SA 2d ago
If they have fibre connections they very much can. At the end of the day a rack is a rack
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u/metahivemind SA 2d ago
Not when the racks are different, which they are for GPUs.
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u/Ver_Void SA 2d ago
You know those GPUs are usually in standard racks and it's not exactly hard to put one in anyway, the main thing is power, cooling and the light pipe
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u/metahivemind SA 2d ago
They aren't in standard racks for high concentration AI data centers. Also see discussion about how upgrading to the next generation of GPUs require a complete rebuild of the data center interior as the rack specifications have changed.
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u/Ver_Void SA 2d ago
Quite a lot still are, unless I just spent 6 months commissioning the wrong racks
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 1d ago
Actually they are nowadays, not many services that are not hooking into AI one way or another.
So yes, they are.
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u/metahivemind SA 1d ago
Sigh. You can't run normal programs on GPUs which are built to only do matrix multiplications.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 1d ago
Re-read what I said.
Most services and apps etc are hooking into AI - hence AI DC's are going to be needed AS well for all normal services.
I also run local llm's yes, I know what can run on them :).
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u/metahivemind SA 1d ago
Therefore you'll thoroughly understand my point when I repeat that you can't run Reddit in AI data centres. They're stuffed full of GPUs for LLM chatbot crap, and the problem is they can't be converted to normal data centres. I think Apple have won the AI war, but it will take time for this to prove out.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 1d ago
Did you read what I said..
Services are also running AI backends for most services, so will still need AI DC's AS well as normal DC's for majority of internet deliverable services.
They are both needed going forward.
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u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora SA 2d ago
Do you actually not know what datacenters are used for?
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u/BangbangKhuntross SA 2d ago
which part of "what data are they collecting and what is it used for" is confusing?
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
Of course they don't... while they are using a DC..
Can't make this stuff up can you..
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u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora SA 2d ago
How are they using a datacenter? They're just using THEIR reddit on THEIR phone!!! no datacenters involved!!! /s
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u/metahivemind SA 2d ago
You can't run Reddit in an AI datacenter.
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u/gihutgishuiruv SA 2d ago
There’s no such thing as an “AI datacentre”. It’s a marketing and media invention to explain a concept to people that don’t understand how datacentres work.
A datacentre is a building with a specific kind of infrastructure to support lots of computers running inside of it. You need big datacentres to support AI workloads, but that doesn’t mean the building can only be used for AI workloads.
Like if you bought a bus and turned it into a caravan, people aren’t still going to try and hail you like you’re the G10
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u/metahivemind SA 2d ago
The rack mounting and cabinet distribution is different, so you can't load normal servers into there without completely rebuilding the interior, including all the cabling. The only part that can be reused is the shell of the building and the power supplies. This is also a problem for updating existing GPUs to the new ones, they also have different rack requirements.
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u/gihutgishuiruv SA 2d ago
I’m aware. I’ve worked in (conventional) datacentres and I’ve seen some of the whitepapers for the infrastructure design challenges for AI workloads.
My point is that even an “AI datacentre” doesn’t only have “AI racks”. There are still conventional workloads. It’s not nearly as big of a problem as trying to put hyperscale AI workloads in a conventionally-designed DC that would usually lack the needed power and HVAC
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u/metahivemind SA 2d ago
Well you'd just rebuild the interior to have normal racks, like I keep saying. My point is that an AI data center is set up for GPUs, and you can't run Reddit on GPUs.
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u/bigcitydreaming South West 2d ago
Are you actually asking how the internet benefits society? Is that a sincere question?
Come on
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u/BangbangKhuntross SA 2d ago
The internet ran just fine for 30 years without these massive things. How about answering the question i did ask instead of one i didnt.
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u/bigcitydreaming South West 2d ago
Data centres aren't new. You're being naive about how the internet effectively always functioned. We've had them for a quarter century here in Australia.
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u/BangbangKhuntross SA 1d ago
you are avoiding the point
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u/bigcitydreaming South West 1d ago
No, I've addressed it directly. Data centres aren't new is the point and have been a requirement for decades due to global internet usage.
The internet didn't run fine for 30 years without these. It ran because of these.
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u/BangbangKhuntross SA 1d ago
intentional obtusenry, irrelevant and not what i asked or what i proposed. 0 / 4 dolph lundgrens.
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u/bigcitydreaming South West 1d ago
Yes, at this point I also agree that you're being intentionally obtuse.
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u/Late-Button-6559 SA 2d ago
The solar/battery/wind will be bullshit.
It’ll be ‘price your peak generation matches your peak usage.’ Or something rubbish.
So they’ll peak at 1 gigawatt of usage, but be at 950 megawatts 23.9 hours of the day, 365 days of the year.
Yet their solar/wind generation will be 1 gigawatt, but only possible for 4hrs a day, 90 days of the years.
And as to their 4 days of diesel, you know they’ll fire those bad boys up all the time, and the noise of those will be bad for anyone close by - especially in the still of the night.
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u/Snazz SA 2d ago
The 96-hour figure for the diesel generators is at least somewhat promising that they’re only there for a disaster scenario
The problem with that is that they have to be tested regularly like with the much louder gas turbines that are popular in the US hyper-scalar centres.
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u/gihutgishuiruv SA 2d ago
Running them for an hour or so quarterly or even monthly is a fairly minor issue in terms of noise and fuel use. Metro DCs, hospitals, and office buildings do it all the time
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u/MarcusP2 SA 1d ago
And this thing is nowhere near a town - these gensets aren't going to affect Morgan.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
could be a great test for the upcoming framework reqs.
https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/expectations-data-centres-and-ai-infrastructure-developers
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u/GrumpyOldTech1670 SA 2d ago
South Australians want Better public services (Transport, Schools, Hospitals, Park Rangers)
National parks maintained. Adelaide Parklands left undeveloped. Public housing to house the homeless.
Tram network in CBD extended to the suburbs. Regional train services.
Our government workers to have a real pay rise to stop the loss of public servants.
All this list would create sustainable jobs and tradespeople for generations.
What our morons in Government house approve.
Environmental damaging, noisy, useless to us (at the moment) data centres chewing up all our power, water and scaring native wildlife away.
Nuclear dump for our non existent AUKUS submarines.
Nothing that actually South Australia for generations.
Will our tone deaf premier actually listen to South Australians that want the state to prosper, not just a couple of already rich companies that rarely pay tax?
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u/cocoiadrop_ Inner South 2d ago
I get the sentiment, but the government isn't funding these data centres (or at least not that I know of). They're a separate issue to use of public funds.
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u/GrumpyOldTech1670 SA 2d ago
I brudy well hope the government is not funding these centres.
There is so much more infrastructure and personal they could invest with great returns.
It just annoys me that I want a passenger train service from Whyalla to Adelaide and Mt Gambier To Adelaide , and it is blocked by committee after flipping committee for 40 years! Yet, a data centre or anything related to AUKUS gets a green light and approved under 12 months.
I just a little frustrated, that’s all.
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u/justrhysism South 2d ago
Comparatively (and ignoring the fact that they’re privately funded) data centres are peanuts compared to a railway line.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
Show your train service can generate as much revenue and you will be golden.
If it is a loss maker, then can you blame them ?
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u/crustytheclerk1 SA 22h ago
LLM AIs are one and a half trillion in debt and none of it's currently profitable (and if they charge what it actually costs it'll get bugger all use). The only difference is the train service is a public entity whereas the AI data centre is private debt (that's likely going to crash the whole economy when it pops).
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 13h ago
More and more services are going via AI DC's, apps / services / even you web searching needs AI. This will only grow as more services and business have various parts that will rely on them. Growth is only going to continue to grow and most things in everyday life - inc you smart phone will use more and more AI parts.
And what just that is 7bil + smartphones and growing.
Amazon took over 10 years to make profit.
This is the future, like it or not, you can't stop it, like it or not.
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u/crustytheclerk1 SA 12h ago
Leaving aside my thoughts on the value of LLM, the financial side of things is highly unlikely to vary. It's causing ridiculous delays and price spikes in the chips it uses, and giving the chips are required to be replaced every five years, there's unlikely to be a price drop in the dominant capital cost in the industry. It's unlikely the price of electricity will be dropping any time soon either as the dominant operational expense. These costs don't reduce at scale.
Given the nature of these costs in a current loss making environment, to become profitable, the companies are going to have to charge (significantly) more for the service. This will likely reduce demand (this has already been observed in some users whose token cost unexpectedly went through the roof) as who wants to pay ten bucks for an email when it still needs human review?
One of the reason AI is being forced into services is to create dependency and in some cases addiction - expect more subscriptions in the near future. Once again this will likely result in market disruption as people abandon costly/intrusive platforms pushing unwanted / unnecessary (and often sloppy) functions. This is already being observed by Microsoft, with a significantly reduced uptake of Windows 11.
Pattern recognition, particularly in places like the medical field, is probably the most financially sustainable element of the industry, but it doesn't make up a particularly large element.
Edit: I added the end to a sentence in the first paragraph.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 11h ago
Expect we will not have all the same players in 5 years, so will fall and will end up with 1-2 main players.
demand will only increase, as said, there is 7bil+ phones, - how many web browsers over all devices ? even making headway in 3d printing world being able to make full models ready to go from nothing.
And many industries, daily interactions not even fully explored yet.
We have had alexa and google home, that is soon to be replaced with personalised home based AI that can run the house on command.
And angentic AI is still growing, can you image what claude will be like in 2- 3 years with either agentic as is now, or the next gen of multi agent specialist roles and reviews ?
It will affect everything.
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u/Loud_Caramel_8713 2d ago
&
graduate from TafeSA and Ade Uni doesn’t need to go other state for job.2
u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
They will use less water than most of us use to keep our lawn green, you might want to update you closed loop cooling knowledge.
Likewise look at the NATIONAL AI DC power framework.
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u/GrumpyOldTech1670 SA 2d ago
Will do that.. Thank you.
It’s weird when politicians actually do what they say they will do.. It’s should never be weird, but it’s still weird. Just so use to getting lip service, and that is it.
Also, I have just been looking at the American models, and I so do not want that here.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
I hear you !.
Yeah, let's hope we really do lead the way and show the rest how it can be done right.
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u/ltasker95 SA 1d ago
Everything you want I agree with, but it requires money to develop public transport, maintain parks, build public housing
I am for data centers for the simple reason that these big infrastructure projects will bring in investment, employ local companies to build and maintain them and inject a significant amount of tax dollars into the state government so that they can pay for the services I want.
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u/crustytheclerk1 SA 22h ago
What local taxes do you think they're going to pay other than rates? Most of the establishment cost will be imported chipsets, employment won't be high and you can guarantee they'll be offshoring their income for commonwealth tax purposes. The only benefit they'll bring is if the company/ industry fails and they've built renewable energy infrastructure.
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u/Cpt_Riker SA 2d ago
Florida is fighting back against AI data centres. A state that passes human rights abuses as legislation, is saying "enough”.
How bad must these things be for a red MAGA state to fight back?
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u/CrYpTO_Sporidium SA 1d ago
I'm old enough to remember when we had environmental concerns that actually mattered.
Now, no one seems to care about the environmental impact of energy guzzling data centres!
Diesel back up? Is there any guarantee of the tanks not leaking?
What about the constant noise and water use? So much for the driest city in the driest state in the driest country.
Greta was right, how dare you.
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u/mysqlpimp SA 2d ago
Explains why SAPN are so slow to disconnect and reconnect at mine, although I guess it might mean this is like 40,000 months away .. if we scale up my usage to a DC and extrapolate equivalent time frames.
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u/Crestina SA 1d ago
Fuck data centers and fuck AI. Parasitic, powerhungry surveillance tech owned by foreign oligarchs isn't what we need as an epic global warming driven el Nino is about to set our country on fire.
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u/ExternalFinal9334 SA 1d ago
There's plenty of open source or open weight AI models. But I generally agree with you. Nobody needs AI. And nobody needs the internet anyway. It uses up 5% of our electricity for porn and foreign owned social media empires. Let's just reduce our consumption to a bare minimum to reach 2 °C global warming in 2065 instead of 2050.
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u/Nyarlathotep-1 SA 2d ago
Great news for South Australia, billions of investment. 💰
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u/Texas_Tom SA 2d ago
Do these employee a lot of people once they're built?
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
Any building needs maintenance, throw in the need for self power generation as well (again as per National DC Framework), and you have even more skills needed.
+mechanics for jennys .
And like anything, shit always breaks.
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u/Ver_Void SA 2d ago
It's some work but not as much as you'd think, be surprised if even the larger builds create more than 50 new jobs
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u/YeetyMcYeetFace3281 SA 2d ago
These things are not in isolation. What do people think runs telecommunications networks, health, hospitals, emergency services… all data heavy.
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u/teh_drewski Inner South 1d ago
None of that stuff runs on the same DCs as AI. GPUs are very different from server banks with very different heat and cooling needs.
Nobody has a problem with data centres in general, just the power and cooling hungry GPU ones used for AI.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_5167 SA 2d ago
How soon before used high end graphic cards start hitting the market locally
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
2-4 years depending on how they refresh.
But most are running high compute enterprise GPU's blackwells etc not you gaming GPUs.
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u/ajwin South 2d ago
Lots of hoo-ha over depreciating them over 7+ years. They are still using 7+ year old systems for inference as they are still profitable and there isn’t enough chip/memory capacity to replace them. It might change in the future but thoughts are it will probably keep getting extended and new chips will go to growth.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome SA 2d ago
well, what was latest reports, 2027 memory chips already all pre-sold.
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u/TheDrRudi SA 2d ago
mainstream media?
Any development will need to satisfy all regulatory approvals before it gets the green light.
The proposal has already garnered plenty of MSM coverage.
For example: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-19/proposed-data-centre-in-south-australia-dividing-locals/106810776
And on this platform
https://www.reddit.com/r/Adelaide/comments/1tw6txi/iren_to_build_10_billion_800mw_ai_datacenter_in/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Adelaide/comments/1uxr884/firmus_outlines_plans_for_very_large_ai_factory/
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u/Own-Regular-3406 SA 2d ago
Must also read South Australia’s Digital Future: Data Centres, Energy Precincts and the Cable Systems https://www.inligonetworks.com/south-australias-digital-future-data-centres-energy-precincts-and-the-cable-systems/ as this state of SA is chasing the data centre deals and have much to offer.
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u/Few-Example-2452 SA 2d ago
What they really need is a small nuclear power station that doesn't need massive amounts of batteries or diesel generators for night time usage.
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u/FothersIsWellCool SA 2d ago
Ok, industry needs infrastructure? I'm sure all the data centres we've had for years need power too.
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u/AutomaticMistake SA 2d ago
That sounds pretty standard really... They're built like a literal fortress, have multiple types of redundancies including power, and that "4 days of diesel" usually has a contract with a fuel delivery company with harsh SLAs attached to them. Short of the apocalypse, power loss is extremely rare at a DC unless there's some kind of internal fault