Data centre due by Christmas
THE data centre planned on land just below the Clyde Dam should be completed by Christmas.
Shipping delays have meant the completion date for the construction of the centre will run past the originally intended end date of this month.
A Contact Energy spokeswoman said there had been a few delays in completion mainly due to international shipping issues.
The power box units were not scheduled for delivery until late next month which would hold up completion.
Work was continuing on CCTV poles, concrete slabs for the power box units and the sound wall.
Work on the substation by Aurora was tracking well, with most earthworks completed. The lines company was planning for a live date about midDecember.
Consents were granted for the data centre in March after a hearing in February.
Contact Energy had applied for a 0.65ha twolot subdivision, and landuse consent for the construction of a data centre and associated facilities at 46 Fruitgrowers Rd, Earnscleugh, be approved.
The proposal consisted of the construction of eight containerised data centres, associated facilities and a noisemitigation wall along the eastern and southern boundaries of the site.
The containers would each hold 368 servers.
The proposal also included vehicle access, five car parks, loading, and manoeuvring space, and landscaping and planting around the perimeter.
At the time the application was lodged, a notice of requirement was issued by Aurora Energy for a substation beside the data centre to provide it with a direct connection to the local distribution network and for a new supply for Clyde from 2025.
The data centre would be operated by a separate entity, Lake Parime, under a lease agreement with Contact.
Lake Parime was a privately owned United Kingdom digital infrastructure company connected to renewable energy sources for machine learning, modelling, data visualisations, with a particular focus on block chain and cryptocurrency mining.
No staff would be permanently based on the site but Lake Parime would employ a small number of specialised maintenance staff to manage the servers within the data centre.
Contact Energy head of hydro generation Boyd Brinsdon said in evidence at the hearing the reason the site was selected was because it was next to the Clyde power station reducing transmission and distribution losses.
He explained Lake Parime was entering into a commercial relationship with Contact Energy for the supply of up to 10MW of electricity.
The data centre could operate when electricity demand was low, and scale back its operations and use of electricity when demand was high. Data processing was not part of Contact Energy’s core business, but it would continue to hold the resource consents in its own name as applicant to ensure the data centre operated within the environmental parameters required by its resource consents, Mr Brinsdon said.
An attempt to contact Lake Parime by the Otago Daily Times over the past few days had been unsuccessful.