Project Southgate Tasmania: FAQs
Southgate is a long-term initiative to design and deploy sovereign, energy-aligned infrastructure for AI training and inference.
Commonly asked questions
Southgate is a new AI infrastructure project built in Tasmania to support scientific research, cloud services, and sovereign digital infrastructure, powered by renewable energy.
Yes, the total amount of energy is large. Having said that, Southgate will use hydro, wind and solar power, just like other major industries in the region. By becoming part of the grid as a new generation baseload user, Southgate helps support long-term investment in clean energy and can actually help lower electricity costs over time.
No, Southgate connects to high-capacity substations used by industry and doesn’t affect residential power. Additionally, by using a steady amount of power, Southgate can help bring energy prices down over time by sharing the cost of power infrastructure with more users - instead of it falling mostly on households and small businesses.
A very limited amount of water is used. The Southgate AI Factory is designed to operate without using any water at all for most of the year. Water is only used for cooling on hot days above 26°C, which, based on historical weather data in Launceston, is around 10 days per year. Even then, the amount used is minimal, just a fraction of what traditional data centres use. We have also designed the facility to capture and reuse rainwater within the facility. Over a year, Southgate’s water usage is predicted to be more than 99% lower than a typical cloud facility. In a day, on average over the year, the Firmus design uses about the same water as one household shower.
The Southgate facility has been designed to meet all planning and environmental requirements set by Tasmanian authorities. The data centre has been designed not to exceed background noise levels at adjacent residential areas. We’ve acoustically treated as required and follow a strict noise management plan.
During construction: local trades, civil, and electrical contractors. After launch: tech ops, maintenance, energy, security, and software engineering roles - with training support for young Tasmanians.
Construction will begin later this year, with the first stage expected to be up and running in 2026. The project will continue to grow over time in stages, depending on demand and community feedback. It’s designed to be a long-term part of Tasmania’s future.
Firmus is an Australian technology company building modern, energy-efficient infrastructure for AI. We're working with local and global partners to create a new kind of digital industry, one that’s clean, transparent, and built to benefit Australia.
Please reach out to community@firmus.co and we'll be in touch.
Each Southgate deployment uses the Firmus AI Factory — an optimised modular, high-density system.
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