QLD ‘Supernode’ data storage facility approved

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners announced the launch of one of the largest proposed ‘green data’ storage facilities in the Southern Hemisphere, called the ‘Supernode’ project.

The digital infrastructure project will be powered by Queensland-based renewable power projects, joining critical energy and data storage capacities to save data centre clients on renewable power costs.

This comes after Acting Premier and Minister for State Development, Steven Miles, said the global renewables firm gained all relevant council planning and FIRB approvals for the complex and its location in Brendale, Moreton Bay.

The Supernode project will also host one of the largest battery storage installations in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM).

“Supernode is the latest example of our strategy to make impactful and ‘hard to repeat’ investments that help decarbonise energy intensive data centre operations using renewable power solutions,” David Scaysbrook, co-founder and Managing Partner at Quinbrook, said.

“Brendale is a truly unique location in the Pacific region and is well deserving of the ‘Supernode’ title. Queensland can now compete more aggressively with the rest of Australia on the fundamentals of cost, sustainability of operations and latency in order to attract leading data storage operators and create the necessary foundations for the next digital age.

“This is the critical communications infrastructure needed by progressive industry in this State and it represents a competitive advantage in achieving Net Zero operations at low cost that may become the envy of competing economies the world over.”

The potentially-$2.5 billion investment project is also set to connect Brisbane to the global Cloud through international sub-sea cable for the first time.

“The Supernode is an innovative new project planning to bring large-scale storage facilities for both data and battery energy to the one site,” Miles said.

“This is one of the major new economy projects coming to Queensland thanks to the government’s strategic investment in digital technology infrastructure and renewable energy.”