Wagga Wagga is now the target of two multibillion-dollar data centre proposals, with IREN announcing plans for a 900-megawatt campus on the city’s outskirts.
The Nasdaq-listed AI cloud provider says it expects to spend more than $10 billion on the project, called Redbank, which would be built in stages over six to eight years and target a grid connection in 2029. IREN says it would also pay about $200 million to Wagga Wagga City Council over 30 years, towards a community benefit fund, infrastructure projects and council rates. The project is expected to support about 500 construction jobs and 200 operational roles.
IREN executive director Lindsay Ward said the centre was needed as community and business use of digital services grows rapidly.
Redbank is still at a very early stage. IREN says it is in the early assessment phase, the company is still working toward a grid connection, and the project is not part of its announced 5GW secured-power portfolio. A scoping study is due to be lodged with the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure at the end of October, and community drop-in sessions are planned in Wagga for 4 and 5 November.
It is IREN’s second Australian project, after an 800MW campus announced in June for Bundey, South Australia.
Redbank follows last month’s announcement by CDC Data Centres. CDC has proposed a four-building campus at Gregadoo, about 11 kilometres south of the city centre, with an estimated cost of $15 billion and power demand of up to 1.4GW. That proposal is at the SEARs stage of the state planning process, and it has drawn fierce criticism, including two petitions against it.
Together, the projects would add around 2.3GW of demand to one regional city. The interest is partly about the grid: Transgrid has suggested Wagga Wagga and Yass could each host between 1 and 2 GW of data centre-related infrastructure because of their proximity to transmission lines.
