Credit: Dreamstime
NextDC has secured the rights for additional land as it plots out its second Darwin data centre, naming it D2.
The new parcel of land measures in excess of 15 hectares and will provide additional capacity for the long-term development of a hyperscale campus, designed to serve the emerging Asia South region via a connection to Darwin through new international submarine cable networks.
NextDC has been working in partnership with the Northern Territory government and the Land Development Corporation to further plan this large-scale data centre and renewable energy expansion project.
This comes as the data centre operator revealed plans for its D1 operation, which was announced in October last year and will be located at 2 Harvey Street in Darwin’s CBD.
NextDC said the D1 site was strategically positioned next to a major electricity substation as well as critical telecommunications, utilities, public infrastructure and the Charles Darwin University Campus.
Subject to development approval, it is expected to accommodate a data centre facility capable of approximately 8MW of capacity.
The facility will feature an Innovation Centre – a purpose-built collaboration hub that will promote research, development and new incubator programs.
It will also contain a Mission Critical Operations space (MCX), which will enable customers to operate and monitor high availability and business critical services, such as mine sites, disaster management centres, network operations, satellite operations, security operations and remote operations centres.
The D1 data centre joins other sustainable initiatives in the territory and follows the Northern Territory government’s commitment to 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030, as well as solar energy infrastructure provider's Sun Cables' 3.2GW dispatchable solar power sub-sea cable, which is planned to terminate in Darwin.
Vocus, the facility’s anchor tenant, will host its new services and associated infrastructure in the D1 facility and will also supply high-capacity connectivity on its Terabit Territory fibre network.
Vocus recently commenced work on the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable system and Project Horizon, the latter of which will provide a new fibre route from Perth to Port Hedland and onto Darwin.
“We are very excited to see the continued investments into digital infrastructure in the Northern Territory and look forward to partnering with NextDC and the Northern Territory government to turn Darwin into Australia’s digital gateway to Asia,” HyperOne CEO Bevan Slattery said. “With more than 500 million people within 50 milliseconds of Darwin, the NT’s digital potential is huge.
“Investments being made by NextDC and HyperOne will transform the Territory economy and will make it the digital hub of Northern Australia. HyperOne’s $1.5 [billion] investment in a new hyperscale national network is critical to enabling traffic globally to travel via Darwin to the rest of the country.”
