Gigawatt off-grid data center campus filed for Western Australia

Gingerah Energy has filed plans for a 1GW data center campus powered by a 6.7GW off-grid renewable energy hub on 27,520 hectares of pastoral land 100km south of Broome, Western Australia. The company submitted the Meridien Renewable Energy Hub and Data Centre to the Australian National Environmental Protection Agency's EPBC portal.

The generation stack carries hard numbers: approximately 5.2GW of solar capacity, 1.5GW of wind turbines, 5GW of battery energy storage and around 1.5GW of natural gas firming capacity, feeding the data center campus and on-site substations. The site is the Frazier Downs pastoral lease.

What is the build timeline?

Stage one, rated at up to 240MW of IT load, would be constructed and commissioned progressively over two to three years. Construction could reportedly begin in 2029. Full build-out is targeted for 2038. The data centers would use closed-loop cooling to cut water consumption.

The site sits on land owned by the Karajarri people. Gingerah Energy signed an Indigenous Land Use Agreement for the land two years ago. Before the data center pivot, the location was earmarked for a large-scale renewables-based green hydrogen and ammonia project, with Gingerah also planning geothermal generation capacity at the site.

Who is behind the project?

Gingerah Energy is a joint venture. Its partners include:

• Longreach Capital Investment
• The Karajarri Traditional Lands Association (KTLA), the registered native title body for the Karajarri people
• Fugro Exploration, the Australian arm of Dutch geodata company Fugro

Founder and CEO Jap van Hattum framed Meridien as both an infrastructure play and a connectivity asset. He said: "Project Meridien has the potential to become Western Australia's most significant near-term sustainable AI campus, combining gigawatt-scale data center capacity with dedicated renewable energy infrastructure and potentially the lowest latency connectivity to Singapore of any location in Australia."

Van Hattum also defined the commercial model: the venture will not carry the development alone. "Our proposition is not to finance and build a multibillion-dollar development ourselves, but to establish an investment-ready infrastructure platform bringing together specialist energy providers, data center developers and anchor customers," he said.

Why does the scale matter?

The proposal pairs one of the largest renewable generation portfolios filed in Australia with a gigawatt-class IT load, bypassing the grid entirely. The 5GW battery fleet and 1.5GW of gas firming are sized to firm 6.7GW of variable solar and wind output for continuous data center operation.

The Singapore latency claim, if realized, positions the Broome-region site against established northern-Australia cable landing points for AI workloads serving Asian markets. The 2029 construction start now depends on EPBC assessment.

The filing opens a decade-long build: 1GW of compute, 2038 completion, one renewable hub behind it.