WA’s wasted watts vs Musk’s “Colossus”: a tale of AI opportunities

Why the Western Australian South-West Interconnected System (SWIS) could run a headline AI super-computer on renewable energy it already spills.

The Beast in Memphis

When Elon Musk’s xAI switched on the first tranche of its Memphis-based Colossus cluster in late 2024 it instantly became the world’s largest single AI training machine: ≈100 000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs drawing somewhere between 150 MW and 250 MW once cooling and power-conditioning overheads are counted. Tom's Hardware (opens in a new tab) RD World Online (opens in a new tab)

Phase-two, now under construction, doubles the silicon to ≈200 000 GPUs and is expected to push continuous demand above 300 MW. Tom's Hardware (opens in a new tab) For resilience xAI has parked 35 trailer-mounted gas turbines behind the fence line - enough to keep training jobs alive during local grid disturbances but also enough to pour roughly 2 000 t of NOₓ into an already pollution-burdened neighbourhood each year. Politico (opens in a new tab)

Using the Tennessee Valley Authority’s grid-average carbon factor (≈0.325 kg CO₂-e / kWh) that first 100 000-GPU slab alone emits ~0.7 Mt CO₂-e every year - a footprint a shade larger than all of Qantas’s domestic flights combined. U.S. Energy Information Administration (opens in a new tab)

The tale of curtailed renewables on the WA SWIS

On the opposite side of the planet, Western Australia’s South-West Interconnected System (SWIS) already spills about 1.4 TWh of wind-and-solar energy a year - the inevitable result of midday negative prices, minimum-inertia constraints and the inflexibility of legacy thermal plant. That equates to ≈160 MW of clean power, 24 × 7. The number is not a model-world projection; it falls straight out of AEMO’s public WEM dispatch files for FY-2024. AEMO (opens in a new tab)

Put another way, that “thrown-away” energy could:

• Fully power ~270 000 WA homes (WA’s representative household = 5 198 kWh ∙ yr⁻¹). Australian Energy Market Commission (opens in a new tab)
• Run about 65 % of Colossus phase-one at 100 % utilisation - or all of it at a still-formidable 65 % duty cycle.

Why this is (Slightly) Heretical

“WA could host the world’s largest AI brain and lower its emissions profile at the same time.”

That turns the usual narrative on its head:

• Not another ravenous data-centre gobbling fossil fuels - it’s a negative-curtailment device that stabilises the duck curve.
• Uses electrons nobody else can take without new poles & wires.
• Turns stranded sunshine into export revenue.

The Playbook for WA & Australia

1. Firm the spill – 400 MW / 1 GWh of grid-forming batteries at Collie (already underway) so the 160 MW “gift” becomes 24/7.
2. Policy lever – offer fixed-price renewable PPAs for curtailment + spare rooftop PV certificates; lure hyperscalers with “green-GPU label”.
3. Export narrative – Australia becomes the place where energy-intensive bits of the AI stack (training) happen, while inference stays near users.

The Bottom Line

WA is already throwing away almost enough clean energy to run the most headline-grabbing AI supercomputer on the planet.

Conclusion: The audacity of plugging in

If Colossus symbolises AI’s insatiable energy appetite, WA’s curtailed renewables symbolise the flip-side: we are literally tripping over clean electrons that nobody can use. Redirecting just today’s wastage would erase the carbon tail of a Musk-scale super-computer and hand Western Australia a flagship industry more future-proof than LNG and more margin-rich than iron ore.

The challenge is no longer technical; it is simply a matter of whether Australia wants to export one of the world’s first exascale AI fabrics run on spilled renewables - or watch someone else do it first.