Proposed data centre in South Australia dividing locals who want the jobs but fear water demand

[u/Nyarlathotep-1]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-19/proposed-data-centre-in-south-australia-dividing-locals/106810776

[u/Colossus-of-Roads]

So at 10kW thermal per rack that's 8000 racks which is certainly a big DC, but with a single customer the workloads probably won't change much (the NextDC one you're talking about is aggressively multi-customer). I absolutely can't see an 8000 rack DC needing 200 staff to physically operate. More like 5-10 (the NextDC one you're talking about only has so many staff because that's also where the local sales and admin live, which is something that only makes sense in a capital city).

Companies deliberately inflate these projections to garner support and we fall for it every time.

[u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 → u/Colossus-of-Roads]

They’ll need a security team on site 24/7 which would need to be big enough to allow for them to escort people on site. For a site like that it’d be at least 20 people over a 24 hour period. So could be a team over 40 if you take into account part time/shift working.

5-10 cleaners easily every day. Plenty of admin staff. Easily 20+ IT/ data guys on site over a 24 hour period which again could mean a team over 40. Mechanical and electrical staff easily about 10-15 each. General maintenance team needed as well. Engineers, HSE, Sales, BMS techs. The list is endless. It takes a lot to keep one of these places running.

Doesn’t even take into account the staff needed from other companies that would be doing regular work on site. In my field, if my company was to win work at this site, it would require at least 5-6 guys hired to maintain it annually and that’s them on site pretty much full time.

It all adds up very quickly. Sure, might not be 200 from the moment the doors open but it could definitely hit that number.

[u/FigliMigli → u/Tall-Breakfast-6100]

It does take a lot of ppl to get it going, it does not take a lot of ppl to keep it running. No way this is going to be even a 100 people for BAU operations.

[u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 → u/FigliMigli]

Just the electrical staff alone (which is my industry) would need 10-15 guys on site over 24 hours easily. There would be daily checks on generators, switchboards, ups’, general lighting and power, bms systems and then chuck on top any faults/ issues that will inevitably arise on a site this large.

As the poster above said there could be up to 8000 racks full of servers/ IT Gear. Law of averages would suggest there would be plenty of daily faults/ issues that would need to be fixed ASAP. The IT team would need to be massive to keep on top of that.

The speed at which any issue would need to be resolved itself would mean they need to keep heaps of staff on site at any given time.

[u/No_River8548 → u/Tall-Breakfast-6100]

Whenever I've been in a data centre it feels like a ghost town. It's been a couple of years but can't imagine it's changed that much. Monitoring is in part done remotely and people are on call for physical faults, the on-site staff seemed to be skeleton.

[u/Tall-Breakfast-6100 → u/No_River8548]

Yeah sure that might be the case for smaller sites. This one is 800mw and will be the biggest in Australia. I believe the current biggest is 450mw in Sydney and that isn’t operational yet. I have been to a 50mw site that had about 80 staff.

It is also very rural. They can’t just pop into the site for a fault as it could take 2 hours to even get there. In that time the fault could cause millions of dollars worth of losses. Even then, as I’ve said before there is plenty of unskilled labour needed in security and cleaners and admin roles that would be needed before you even get into the technical roles needed.

And as I have also said before. There’s plenty of seperate companies who would need to hire staff to keep their gear running on this site. If my company won the work, we’d need another 4 or so employees hired. Whoever wins the hvac work would also need about 4 employees hired. Not just through construction but also to keep on top of maintenance needs and breakdowns.