Which Australian cities have the most data centre capacity?

Sydney holds ~60% of built-out capacity and ~65% of the power pipeline: Australia is a two-metro market with policy satellites

Sydney holds around 60% of built-out capacity and around 65% of the power pipeline. Precinct-level detail for Sydney's five clusters, Melbourne's western corridor, and the Canberra, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Tasmanian markets.

Sydney's dominance rests on submarine cable landings, the densest enterprise demand, and Eastern Creek's power-and-land combination. Melbourne's west is the challenger corridor. Canberra is structurally sovereign demand; Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide serve regional, resources and defence niches; Tasmania is the emergent AI-factory frontier.

Revenue share by region, 2025

NSW pipeline scale

44 data centre projects totalling 11.4 GW were in the NSW pipeline at 31 March 2026 (Climate Council/DC Byte), equivalent to nearly four Eraring coal stations. By end-2025 the NSW Government had approved or received SSD applications for 22 facilities totalling 3.67 GW, and in March 2026 the Investment Delivery Authority endorsed 15 projects worth A$51.9bn for prioritised approvals.

1. 11.4 GW pipeline 44 projects at 31 Mar 2026, nearly four Eraring coal stations
2. 3.67 GW in planning 22 facilities approved or SSD lodged by end-2025
3. A$51.9bn prioritised 15 projects endorsed by the Investment Delivery Authority, Mar 2026

The market, schematically

Launceston / Bell Bay

Broome ('Meridien')

Map key

primary hub

major metro

regional presence

AI-factory frontier

Nodes by tier

Read-across

Two primary hubs on the south-east seaboard carry the market; every other node is a policy or niche satellite (sovereign Canberra, cabled Perth, fastest-growing Brisbane, defence Adelaide), with the AI-factory frontier at Bell Bay and Broome.

Sydney's growth has consolidated into five precincts: Eastern Creek/Huntingwood is now the largest operating cluster in the country

Eastern Creek / Huntingwood: the operating base

The precincts

• Eastern Creek / Huntingwood: AirTrunk SYD3 (~330-400 MW operating, Australia's largest single operating campus); CDC Eastern Creek (200+ MW operating, EC5/6 adding 108 MW); NEXTDC S7 (612 MW proposed; OpenAI MoU); Goodman 'Project Atlas' (~500 MW proposed); Stack Erskine Park; AWS ~80 MW (est.).

• Kemps Creek / Mamre Road: AirTrunk SYD4 (up to 1.2 GW planned; land A$780m Nov 2025); ISPT campus (~A$5bn, up to 1 GW across six buildings); Microsoft ~100 MW UC.

• Marsden Park: CDC 504 MW approved Nov 2025, scalable to ~1 GW, billed as the Southern Hemisphere's largest.

• Horsley Park: NEXTDC S4 (~300 MW planned; record 250 MW contract); Stack A$3.7bn / 450 MW application.

• Macquarie Park & north: Macquarie DC IC3 Super West (63 MW); Stockland hyperscale approval (Feb 2026); NEXTDC S1-S3, S6 Artarmon 'AI Factory'.

• City fringe: Wetherill Park (Stockland/EdgeConneX 160 MW), Minchinbury (Starwood/Doma), Norwest (GreenSquareDC A$1.2bn, 110 MW), Ultimo (DigiCo SYD1, 88 MW on completion).

Selected announced Sydney capacities, MW IT

Melbourne's west is a deliberate power play: the Truganina–Laverton–Derrimut corridor anchors on AusNet's Deer Park terminal

1. Truganina Stack MEL01 (180 MW) and MEL02 (252 MW); ~1 GW-substation mega-project mooted
2. Laverton CDC Laverton 450 MW planned (150 MW first campus UC), ground broken Feb 2025
3. Derrimut AirTrunk MEL1 185+ MW, PUE 1.15
4. AusNet's Deer Park terminal the power anchor of the west corridor

Pipeline by status

Selected Melbourne capacities, MW IT

Beyond the big two: sovereign Canberra, cabled Perth, fastest-growing Brisbane, defence Adelaide

Canberra: the sovereign hub

CDC's original campuses (Hume, Fyshwick) anchor federal government demand under the Hosting Certification Framework; Microsoft/CDC ~60 MW (EcoGPT tracking). Macquarie Data Centres' Canberra campus is Certified Strategic and claims a material share of government workloads; NEXTDC C1 completes the set.

Canberra's ceiling is demand-driven rather than power-driven: growth follows whole-of-government cloud mandates, including the Whole-of-Government Cloud Computing Policy effective July 2026.

Brisbane: fastest-growing region

NEXTDC B1/B2 (B2 expansion under way); Quinbrook's 'Supernode' at Brendale pairs a data centre campus with grid-scale storage, the energy-integrated model the net-generator policy will push mainstream. Queensland grows at ~6.8% CAGR (IMARC), the fastest of any region, with edge deployments riding the 5G rollout.

Adelaide: defence-driven

NEXTDC A1 opened ~late 2024; DCI (Brookfield) operates at Kidman Park. NT & SA combined hold ~10.0% revenue share, with defence-industry demand the swing factor.

Perth: cable-landing advantage

AirTrunk PER1; NEXTDC P1/P2; Equinix PE1/PE2. PE2 is the landing station for the Australia-Singapore Cable and the Oman Australia Cable, making Perth Australia's lowest-latency gateway to Asia and the Middle East. WA holds 12.4% revenue share on resources-sector and subsea demand.

Frontier: Project Meridien

A proposed 1 GW facility on Karajarri country south of Broome would put Australia in the global top power class; early-stage, but a marker of where land-plus-power economics point.

Regional scoreboard

Each satellite metro turns on one swing factor named above: whole-of-government cloud mandates in Canberra, energy-integrated campuses and 5G edge in Brisbane, subsea cable landings in Perth, and defence-industry demand in Adelaide.

Tasmania is the structural surprise: cool climate, hydro-wind firming and a world-first AI Factory Zone

Metro positioning summary (inashanu synthesis)

• AI Factory Zone (Jul 2025): world-first designation in Northern Tasmania clearing the path for Firmus's Project Southgate.

• Bell Bay: former Gunns pulp mill site; ~288 MW draw, up to 400 MW planned statewide; ~10 days/year of water cooling and ~99% less water than a typical data centre.

• Mainland pairing: Southgate couples Tasmanian campuses with CDC-partnered mainland sites and a 150 MW Melbourne phase 1; Firmus targets 1.6 GW by 2028, financed by a US$10bn Blackstone/Coatue debt facility (Feb 2026) and >US$10.5bn post-money equity (Aug 2026).

Why it matters

Tasmania tests whether Australia's energy constraint can be arbitraged: dispatchable-load AI factories co-located with renewables could undercut metro power costs while satisfying net-generator rules by design. Watch water, transmission and whether GPU customers accept latency to Hobart.

Project Southgate in numbers

Sources

1. IMARC, as at 2026
2. ResearchAndMarkets via Business Wire, as at 16 Jul 2025
3. Climate Council/DC Byte, as at Jun 2026
4. The Good Builder, as at 6 May 2026
5. w.media via EcoGPT, as at 27 Mar 2026
6. The Good Builder, as at May 2026
7. ITK Research top-10 UC, as at 11 May 2026
8. NSW Planning Portal, as at Nov 2025
9. iEnvironmental, as at 16 Jun 2026
10. Troview, as at 29 Jun 2026
11. DCD, as at 4 Sep 2026
12. Next West Observer, as at 3 Aug 2026
13. ITK Research, as at May 2026
14. JLL Melbourne H1 2025, as at 13 Oct 2025
15. W.Media, as at 2026
16. Max Qi, as at 30 Jul 2026
17. Allens, as at 2025
18. DataCenterMap, as at 2026
19. Canberra: EcoGPT, as at Apr 2026
20. Macquarie Data Centres
21. Performance AI prospectus. Brisbane: ITK Research, as at May 2026
22. Rod Terry/LinkedIn (Jul 2026). Perth: Submarine Networks (OAC)
23. IMARC (2026). Frontier: The Good Builder, as at May 2026
24. Firmus, as at 2 Jul 2025
25. Firmus Bell Bay FAQs, as at Sep 2025
26. DCD, as at 9 Feb 2026
27. Yahoo/Verdict, as at 10 Aug 2026
28. sources as per metro pages

Related

• How much electricity do Australian data centres use?
• What is data centre land worth in Australia?
• What is in Australia's data centre development pipeline?
• Who are the largest data centre operators in Australia?

The full primer is published as an 85-page PDF (download) with the underlying market model as a workbook (download).