The Tiwai Point aluminium smelter is the largest consumer of electricity in New Zealand
The international mining company that owns it occasionally threaten to shut down the operation, culling ~100 good jobs, unless Meridian gives them basically free power.
Public pressure means Meridian acquiesces to lower prices and the govt gives them subsidies.
Everyone's electricity gets more expensive: $200 more per year

Now:

DataGrid got consent from local neighbours after working with neighbours. Likely before Benn Jordan's video
DataGrid will be competing for electricity (which may further increase electricity prices?)
Data centres aren't famous for employing heaps of people
It looks like if you live in Greymouth your internet might get shit-hot fast in the next decade

I'm not 100% against data centres. I do believe this is happening much more quietly than it should. They had already got consent for it before it was really published in the news / I heard about it (I do live under a hermit rock).

The data centre is owned by a foreign company. Presumably the profits will go off-shore. So, we're going to pay more for our own electricity and some investors in Singapore will get more rich. It probably will create 10 local jobs though, so, there's that.

If the govt is giving out subsidies, I'd much rather see it go to education to train the next wave of computer scientists that will figure out how to make the "actually useful" AI tools much more energy efficient.

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[–] BaconWrappedEnigma@lemmy.nz 0 points 2 weeks ago

I read they inked a deal for 140 MW, which would require ~300 hectares of panels to generate. The 78,000sq m facility is about ~8 hectares. So, that would generate about 4-5 MW. They should definitely do panels, even just for the PR / optics.

From: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/datagrids-51b-southland-data-centre-the-three-major-hurdles-facing-the-plan-to-build-nzs-largest-ai-factory/premium/CWUEVJCRZJDQHFPABSJOZOGOUY/

Mercury and Datagrid said in a press release that Datagrid has signed a 15-year “140-megawatt (MW) long-term power purchase option agreement” with Mercury.

and later it says:

Transpower expected 1300MW of new projects (generation and battery storage systems) to be commissioned in 2026, increasing capacity by around 13% nationwide.

Mercury chief executive Stewart Hamilton told the Herald his company’s new wind farm in Southland “will provide some of that power”.

Kaiwera Downs will have around 180MW capacity once its second stage goes live. “But the wind only blows about 40% of the time, which brings that down.”