Equinix has signed its first long-term power purchase agreement in Australia, buying 151 MW of output from TagEnergy's Golden Plains Wind Farm near Geelong. Golden Plains is a 1,300 MW project, and Equinix is not its first customer. The contract makes most sense once you see who else is already buying from the same turbines, and what Equinix is not taking.
Key takeaways
- Equinix signed a 151 MW power purchase agreement with TagEnergy for the Golden Plains Wind Farm in Victoria, Australia, announced on 5 February 2024, and Enerdatics records the contract at 399.47 GWh of electricity a year.
- Under its TagEnergy contract, Equinix will take nearly 20 percent of the total energy generated by Golden Plains Wind Farm East.
- The Golden Plains Wind Farm is a 1,300 MW, $3 billion project in Golden Plains Shire owned by TagEnergy (85 percent) and Ingka Investments (15 percent), with a first stage of 756 MW and 122 turbines that began construction in April 2023.
- Golden Plains already had a power purchase agreement with Snowy Hydro for 302.4 MW, signed in August 2023, before Equinix joined as a second offtaker.
- Global law firm Ashurst advised Equinix Australia on the Golden Plains contract, which is Equinix's first long-term PPA in Australia and in the wider Asia-Pacific region.
What exactly is Equinix buying from Golden Plains?
Equinix is buying a fixed share of a wind farm's output, not a wind farm. An offsite power purchase agreement is a contract in which a company agrees to buy electricity from a generator located somewhere else on the grid, usually for many years, so that the generator has a reliable buyer and the company can claim the power as renewable. The turbines stay with TagEnergy and Ingka Investments.
The useful number is the ratio between the two figures the record gives. Spread over a year, 151 MW running flat out would produce about 1,323 GWh. The contract is recorded at 399.47 GWh. That implies the share Equinix buys runs at roughly 30 percent of its nameplate rating across the year, which is the normal pattern for onshore wind: turbines turn when the wind blows, not on demand.
That gap matters for a data centre operator. Equinix's servers draw power around the clock. A wind contract supplies a large volume of renewable energy over a year, but it does not match the hourly load. The PPA is a way to source renewable volume at scale, and the hour-by-hour balancing happens elsewhere in the market.
Why does a 1,300 MW project need more than one buyer?
Because no single buyer wants all of it. Golden Plains is described as a mega-project, built in stages, and the record says it is expected to deliver the final 4 percent of Australia's renewables target for 2030. A project of that size is typically sold to several offtakers in slices sized to each buyer's demand.
Snowy Hydro, a large utility, signed first. Equinix followed with a corporate contract. A third deal, recorded by Enerdatics in September 2024, saw EnergyAustralia agree a 10-year, 345 MW contract for the separate Golden Plains 2 phase. Each buyer takes a portion, and together they give TagEnergy contracted revenue across a much larger build than any one of them would underwrite alone.
The layering also explains the financing. The project achieved financial close of about $1.2 billion from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in November 2022, and in June 2023 TagEnergy issued a bond of $295.3 million for the construction of that first stage. Lenders like to see contracted offtake. Every additional PPA adds to the share of output that does not depend on wholesale prices. Enerdatics has looked at TagEnergy's green bond and the Golden Plains bank debt in more detail.
What does the Golden Plains contract tell us about how Equinix buys power?
It tells us Equinix buys market by market and repeats what works. In Europe, Leap records Equinix contracts tied to named generation assets in Spain, Portugal and France. Enerdatics has covered how Equinix copied its Spanish solar contract into Portugal and how its 20-year wpd contract in France leans on wind farms already running.
The Australian deal fits that pattern with one difference. In France, Equinix leaned on wind farms that were already operating. In Australia, it is signing up to a project still being built, with output expected from the first quarter of 2025. That puts Equinix's renewable supply in Australia on the same timetable as the project's construction.
The contract also gave Equinix scale it would struggle to find elsewhere in Victoria. The record describes Golden Plains as featuring 215 turbines of about 6.2 MW each, a project large enough that a 151 MW slice is a minority share rather than a dominant one.
Enerdatics' data shows 21 wind PPAs announced in Australia between January 2023 and June 2025. None of them discloses a tariff. Fifteen disclose a capacity, and only three involve technology or telecom buyers: Equinix, NBN Co with 42 MW at the Macarthur wind farm, and Microsoft through a renewable energy certificate agreement at Rye Park that carries no stated capacity. Among those three, Equinix's 151 MW is the largest disclosed volume. Golden Plains alone accounts for three of the 21 contracts, totalling 798.4 MW across Snowy Hydro, Equinix and EnergyAustralia.
What does the deal signal for Australia's corporate PPA market?
It signals that Australian wind offtake is still dominated by utilities and heavy industry, with technology buyers arriving late and in smaller numbers. Eleven of the 21 contracts in the period went to utilities and government buyers such as Stanwell, EnergyAustralia and CS Energy, and three went to large industrial users, led by Rio Tinto, whose 1,120 MW contract for the Bungaban wind farm dwarfs everything else in the set.
For developers, Golden Plains shows how to fill a very large project: sign a utility anchor early, then sell smaller slices to corporate buyers who want named, additional capacity. For data centre operators, the question is supply. Australia's largest wind projects are being contracted in stages, and the corporate share of each is limited by what the utilities have already taken.
Price discovery remains the missing piece. With no tariff disclosed across the whole set, buyers entering the market cannot benchmark their contracts against public deals, and the volume and term are the only comparable terms in the record. Equinix did not disclose the duration of its Golden Plains contract either.
Frequently asked questions
How much power does Equinix buy from Golden Plains? Equinix contracted 151 MW of capacity from the Golden Plains Wind Farm, which Enerdatics records at 399.47 GWh of electricity a year, or nearly 20 percent of the energy generated by Golden Plains Wind Farm East.
Who owns the Golden Plains Wind Farm? TagEnergy owns 85 percent of Golden Plains and Ingka Investments owns 15 percent, after Ingka acquired its stake from TagEnergy in February 2023. The project is co-developed by Westwind Energy.
Who else buys power from Golden Plains? Snowy Hydro signed a 302.4 MW power purchase agreement in August 2023, and EnergyAustralia signed a 10-year, 345 MW contract for the Golden Plains 2 phase in September 2024.
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