Data centre giant Equinix signs on for $3b wind farm
US data centre giant Equinix has struck an off-take deal with the operator of the $3 billion Golden Plains Wind Farm in Victoria – the country’s largest wind farm to date – that will ensure all its Australian portfolio’s power requirements are fully offset by renewable energy.
The landmark power purchase agreement between Equinix and TagEnergy for 151 megawatts will supply enough energy to the grid to cover the Equinix’s 17 facilities around Australia by the end of the decade.
“As of last year, we ran our sites on 96 per cent renewable energy. This agreement will get us to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030,” Guy Danskine, Equinix’smanaging director for Australia, told The Australian Financial Review.
It’s the first such long-term renewable energy agreement in the Asia-Pacific region for the Nasdaq-listed data centre player, which has already struck similar deals elsewhere in the world.
The first stage of the wind farm, Golden Plains East – it is 85 per cent owned by TagEnergy and 15 per cent by Ingka Investments, an arm of flat-pack furniture retailer IKEA – will generate 756 MW when complete.
The deal with Equinix represents nearly 20 per cent of the energy the wind farm’s first stage will produce. Snowy Hydro has already signed up for 40 per cent of the energy and green certificates for the first stage.
Andrew Riggs, TagEnergy managing partner in Australia, said that Equinix’s commitment for 151 MW was material to the project and at an earlier period in the country’s swing toward renewable energy it could have accounted for an entire wind farm project.
“A couple of years ago it would have ranked as one of the largest wind farms in the country, just as their portion of it. That speaks volumes of the pace of the energy transition,” Mr Riggs said.
Around 60 kilometres north of Geelong, the project’s first stage comprises 122 turbines. Construction began last year. When both stages of the 1330 MW project are complete, the Golden Plains facility will have capacity to generate more than 4,000 GWh annually – equivalent to the energy needed to power more than 765,000 homes.
The commitment by a major player such as Equinix to fully offset its power use with renewable energy should pave the wave for the next “tier of players” to follow, accelerating the energy transition, Mr Riggs said.
“When corporates are doing this, it makes great business sense. It’s a leading indicator of where things are going,” he said.
“Players are coming to us looking for hedging solutions to low cost clean energy. That’s a great sign of what’s to come.”
Mr Riggs expects arrangements to launch the second stage of the massive project to be finalised this year.
“We’re going through the final approvals for the grid connection with AEMO. That should be finished in February. Then it’s just a matter of finishing finance and bringing it to market hopefully by the middle of 2024.”
