Data centre boom puts planning, neighbourhoods under pressure. Australia's data-centre expansion is creating new planning challenges, with a Melbourne facility facing opposition from nearby residents as a proposed NSW campus draws scrutiny over the infrastructure needed to power it. In West Footscray, NextDC wants to more than double its M3 data centre to 10ha, despite the facility already operating as close as 15m to neighbouring homes. Residents have reported noise, dust, diesel smells and concerns about air pollution, while local agents say prospective buyers are avoiding properties near the facility. The expansion would take the M3 site beyond its current 41ha footprint, with NextDC expecting to invest $1.5 billion in the facility. A separate data centre has also been approved a few blocks away, adding to concerns about the concentration of large-scale technology infrastructure in the inner west. The Victorian Government this week announced plans to prevent new data centres from being built within 150m of homes and schools, although the proposed rules would not apply retrospectively to existing facilities or projects already in the planning pipeline. The West Footscray dispute comes as the scale of infrastructure required to support data centres is also creating challenges for planning authorities in NSW. The NSW Department of Planning has admitted it failed to consult key government agencies before issuing assessment requirements for a proposed 675MW gas-fired power station at Moss Vale, 136km south-west of Sydney, which would supply a data centre campus. The department acknowledged that public authorities should have been consulted before the requirements were issued. The first of three data centres planned for Cloud Carrier's Moss Vale site in the NSW Southern Highlands. An email from a senior planning official said the department had issued the requirements quickly and without consultation after the project proponent threatened legal action. The proposed power station is being pursued by Nakar Property, the parent company of Cloud Carrier, for a data centre campus in the Southern Highlands. The department said consultation would instead occur during preparation of the project's Environmental Impact Statement and again if a development application is lodged. The Moss Vale proposal comes as NSW attempts to establish a planning and infrastructure framework for a rapidly expanding data-centre sector. As of July, data centres were seeking network connections totalling up to 28GW of capacity in NSW, with projects seeking about 13GW in advanced discussions to connect. The NSW Government has identified 20 data-centre projects worth $51.4 billion in the State Significant Development pipeline. Its data-centre framework requires operators to address energy, water, environmental and community impacts, while proposed electricity reforms are designed to ensure additional network infrastructure costs are recovered from data-centre operators rather than other electricity customers. Lindsay Saunders The Urban Developer - News Editor * EOI END DATE 28.10.2026 * Birtinya Central Sunshine Coast, Lots 11, 12 & 13 Innovation Parkway, Birtinya, QLD 4575 * Totness Precinct Endeavour Way, Totness, SA 5250 * Part of 201 Guntawong Road, Tallawong, NSW 2762 * Lot 5 & Lot 105 Taylors Road, Kingaroy QLD 4610 * Lot 176, 57 Fraser Drive, Tweed Heads South Development potential. TOP STORIES

NVIDIA lines up 8x Australian partners for up to 2GW of AI factory capacity by 2027. September 10, 2026 Australia has had no shortage of data centre announcements recently and today, is another massive one from Nvidia. Nvidia says it is working with eight Australian Nvidia Cloud Partners and infrastructure operators to expand land, power, and powered-shell capacity for what it calls DSX AI factories, targeting a buildout of up to 2 gigawatts by 2027. Data Centres Australia, citing DC Byte, puts the country's current computing capacity at about 1.6GW. Nvidia's target, if delivered, would more than double that load in a little over a year. While there is no published dollar figure, building and equipping 2GW of AI compute currently ranges from A$70 billion to A$100+ billion. Nvidia says it will supply their DSX platform, accelerated computing, networking, software, and ecosystem support, to the Australian partners who will operate the facilities. What's in the deal? The deal brings together a broad coalition of Australian infrastructure operators and cloud providers. Rather than building and operating physical sites directly, Nvidia provides the underlying hardware, networking, and software stack. Local operators take on the heavy capital burden of acquiring land, building shell facilities, securing grid access, and managing cooling infrastructure. The core of this architecture is Nvidia DSX, a full-stack factory blueprint spanning compute blades, high-throughput Quantum and Spectrum networking, and system-level management. It is designed to turn raw electricity into high-throughput inference tokens and model training capacity. Meet the 8 Australian partners building the compute. To reach a target of 2GW, Nvidia has teamed up with eight specialised Australian operators spanning immersion-cooled bare metal, cloud orchestration, network interconnection, and wholesale hyperscale facilities: Firmus specialises in submerged liquid-cooled data centre infrastructure designed for sustainable high-density computing. As part of this expansion, Firmus is scaling up its Project Southgate initiative to host dense clusters of Nvidia accelerated hardware. Sharon AI is an Australian-founded compute provider focused on high-density graphics and machine learning infrastructure. The company plans to deploy up to 68,000 Nvidia GPUs connected via Nvidia Quantum InfiniBand and Spectrum-X Ethernet networking to serve regional sovereign compute demands. Formerly known as Iris Energy, IREN develops high-performance data centres powered by renewable energy assets. IREN is deploying the Nvidia DSX architecture directly across its massive planned 800-megawatt campus at Bundey in South Australia. ResetData builds sovereign immersion-cooled cloud infrastructure inside urban edge locations and retrofitted commercial spaces, targeting lower latencies and reduced carbon footprints for enterprise AI inference. Megaport is an Australian global network-as-a-service provider. Its elastic interconnection fabric will provide high-bandwidth, on-demand, private network routing between these distributed AI factories, corporate networks, and public clouds. CDC Data Centres CDC operates high-security, high-availability facilities across Australia and New Zealand, holding more than 550MW of operational capacity with another 800MW under construction. CDC provides mission-critical, liquid-ready environments for government and enterprise workloads. NEXTDC is Australia's leading independent data centre operator with an extensive national footprint of Tier IV facilities. NEXTDC is actively rolling out direct-to-chip liquid cooling infrastructure to support high-density AI deployments across major capital city campuses. AirTrunk is the Asia-Pacific region's largest hyperscale data centre specialist, building massive campuses with multi-hundred megawatt capacities designed specifically for cloud giants and large-scale AI cluster deployments. Why sovereign compute matters. For Australian enterprises, software companies, and researchers, accessing top-tier compute locally solves several immediate headaches. Relying on offshore hyperscale regions across the US or Asia introduces latency penalties for real-time applications and exposes operational budgets to foreign exchange volatility. More importantly, strict domestic compliance rules around healthcare, financial services, and government data often mandate that raw data and intermediate weights stay within Australian borders. Local access to high-density clusters allows Australian teams to train, fine-tune, and deploy foundation models and autonomous agentic workflows directly on home soil. Australian innovators, including healthcare startup Heidi and enterprise software giant Atlassian, are already tapping into accelerated computing and Nvidia Nemotron open models to build regional tools, applications, and agents. Because the DSX platform supports multi-generational hardware deployments, data centre operators can upgrade compute hardware across upcoming GPU cycles without tearing down and rebuilding core electrical or liquid cooling layouts. The energy and grid reality. Adding 2GW of demand to Australia's power systems by 2027 is an extraordinary engineering challenge. Modern high-density AI clusters draw intense power loads and generate heat that traditional air-cooled setups cannot handle. These DSX builds require advanced direct-to-chip and immersion liquid cooling architectures. Australia has several natural advantages, including abundant land for co-located renewable generation, access to subsea fibre routes, and established domestic interconnects. However, connecting gigawatt-scale loads will require close coordination with transmission networks and substantial private investment into behind-the-meter generation and energy storage. If the participating operators can deliver the required power and infrastructure within the ambitious 2027 window, this initiative will position Australia as a primary compute hub for the broader Asia-Pacific region. Creator of techAU, Jason has spent the dozen+ years covering technology in Australia and around the world. Bringing a background in multimedia and passion for technology to the job, Cartwright delivers detailed product reviews, event coverage and industry news on a daily basis. Disclaimer: Tesla Shareholder from 20/01/2021 If you're eyeing the new Pixel 11 and wondering whether it's worth your money, here is the honest rundown. Google didn't try to reinvent the wheel for 2026. Instead, they took a great everyday phone, ironed out the annoyances, gave the camera some extra muscle, and leaned hard into practical software. Chinese EV maker XPENG has switched on a dedicated humanoid robot production line in Guangzhou, and the first IRON unit to finish assembly walked... Australia's electric-vehicle market just had its most important month on record and next week, the country's biggest EV show arrives in Sydney with an...