NextDC announced on Monday that power supply delays have hit its controversial M3 data centre expansion in Melbourne, prompting a temporary halt in the company’s share trading pending an evaluation of the financial impact.
Situated in West Footscray just 15 metres from residential properties, the M3 facility—which supports artificial intelligence workloads—has previously drawn scrutiny from local residents regarding noise and emissions. Currently, the ASX-listed data centre operator has established 42 megawatts of operational power capacity at the site, with plans to scale production up to 225 megawatts by late 2027.
During its August financial results presentation, NextDC assured investors that the development of an additional 165 megawatts remained on schedule. The facility hosts key infrastructure for Nasdaq-listed customer CoreWeave (via Sharon AI), which is constructing an advanced Nvidia chip cluster to deliver client processing capabilities.
Barrenjoey analyst Eric Choi noted that up to 220 megawatts of capacity at the M3 site could face delays, highlighting broader industry challenges concerning power consumption and the social license required to operate large-scale data facilities.
This probably relates to the jemena works residents have been very unhappy about where Jemena are building more capacity to West Footrscray overhead by increasing pole heights across the neighbourhoods.