Massive planned data centre in Southland would use huge amounts of power

A Singapore company called Datagrid has approval to build a $3.5 billion AI data centre near Makarewa, Southland. Data centres are large buildings packed with computers that need constant power and cooling. This one would use about 6% of all New Zealand's electricity — more than anything except the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter. The company says it will cool the computers with air and rainwater, not groundwater.