A rural industrial area about 200 km east of Halifax is to get an AI data centre campus of up to 420 MW. EverWind Fuels announced on 16 October that it will build it at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, and that Anthropic has signed a 20-year lease for it, CP24 reported. Reuters, quoting an Anthropic executive, says it is the AI company's first data centre agreement in Canada.
Two Phases, 420 MW
The first phase is 95 MW and is meant to come online late next year. A further 325 MW would follow in mid-2028, which takes the campus to a total demand of 420 MW. The building in the lease covers 18,600 square metres; its value was not disclosed.
EverWind puts the whole programme at C$10 billion, which it calls the largest private investment in the province's history: C$8 billion for the data centre campus and C$2 billion for onshore wind. It will pay for the data centre from its own capital first and then look for bank and pension funding. The company expects 2,000 construction jobs and 215 permanent ones.
Grid First, Wind Later
The wind will not be there on opening day. EverWind holds environmental approvals for four mainland wind farms with 650 MW between them, 51 % owned by a First Nations consortium led by Membertou First Nation, but CP24 reports they will not be ready for the late-2027 start. Until then the campus runs on the provincial grid. EverWind says a study by the province's independent grid operator found the existing system can carry the load, and that it will pay the full cost of connections and network upgrades so that other Nova Scotia customers do not.
About 200 MWh of battery storage is planned on site. Cooling water would come from Landrie Lake in a closed loop, about 100,000 litres a day in the first phase and around 500,000 litres a day after the expansion.
The reaction was mixed. Premier Tim Houston welcomed the project and indicated that the province will rely on its existing environmental and industrial approvals rather than write new data centre rules. Opposition leader Claudia Chender criticised the lack of consultation and asked for protection against higher power rates. Anthropic's Jacob Glick said the company would protect ratepayers and water resources, Reuters reports.
A Campus That Cannot Wait for Its Own Power
The pattern is familiar from the projects reported here in the past weeks: the load arrives before the dedicated generation, and the grid has to carry the gap. The announcement says nothing about backup generation, but on a site like this, whatever standby power is installed will be the only source the operator controls from the first day. How it is permitted, fuelled and tested gets decided long before the last wind turbine turns.
Sources: CP24, Reuters (via The Star)