APAC Data Centre Weekly

Editor’s note

Power Delays Finally Have a Price

Lee Heggan · Editor · Week of 19 October 2026

Australia put a market price on power delay this week. NEXTDC’s shares fell 40% after it flagged a delay to extra power at M3, its West Footscray campus, with a possible hit to FY27 guidance. In April 2020, NEXTDC raised an A$2.35bn debt-and-equity package to build its war chest. Six years later, money is not the part setting the timetable.

That reaction is about more than one campus. Our database, extracted 22 October 2026, books Australia at roughly 1.6GW live, 2.73GW under construction and about 14GW in total pipeline. No other APAC market has more under construction. Yet at M3, further stages face an approval wait until after Victoria’s 28 November election, while Jemena’s powerline work is halted until at least February. Planning, capital and demand can all be present while energisation still moves the date.

Southeast Asia is starting to put the same constraint into rules rather than share prices. Malaysia is tightening oversight and taking a Digital Infrastructure Bill toward Cabinet consideration in 2027; Thailand is also moving to finish its data-centre rules. That is a rational response to pipelines outrunning power and water.

It also changes how this week’s 500MW Aolani headline should be read. The Malaysia deal is a non-binding letter of intent, aimed at capacity from the second half of 2027 across several sites. It is demand interest, not yet a delivery schedule. In Batam, meanwhile, concern about independent water and power supply is rising; PLN said the recent outage was not linked to data-centre testing. Both facts matter.

There was real progress too. GreenSquare opened the first stage of SYD1 after an eight-month adaptive-reuse job. Chief Telecom broke ground on a 16MW Taiwan facility for the second half of 2028. In Pohang, SC Capital and NeoAI have 40MW under construction with completion due by end-2027. These are smaller numbers, but they come with works underway and dates attached. They deserve more weight than a larger LOI.

DayOne’s IPO wobble, which follows the financing story we flagged last week, fits the same pattern. The company may cut the raise from up to US$5bn to US$2.5bn–US$3bn or delay it. That does not erase its Malaysia financing; it shows that public equity now wants a clearer price for execution risk.

The mark is M3: a firm grid date, not another capital raise, will tell us whether this was a short scheduling shock or a real reset to Australia’s build timetable.

Sources this week