Orcadian Energy continues to engage with a number of potential partners on the Earlham Gigagrid project and has learned a lot about the feasibility of building an offshore datacentre over the last few months. The Company will present an update on the Earlham Gigagrid project via Investor Meet Company on 8 October 2026 at 12:30 BST.
Questions can be submitted pre-event via your Investor Meet Company dashboard up until 11am on the day of the meeting, or at any time during the live presentation; attendees can sign up to Investor Meet Company for free and add to meet Orcadian Energy plc via: https://www.investormeetcompany.com/orcadian-energy-plc/register-investor
Datacentre densification
The Directors consider that support for the viability of offshore compute can be drawn from published reports concerning SpaceXAI’s Minihard datacentre at the Colossus 2 complex in Memphis, Tennessee, which is reported to be nearing completion. As reported, the Minihard building is intended to house 220,000 Nvidia GB300s[1] and is expected to draw in excess of 450MW of total power with 400MW of IT[2] compute, and a building permit has been reported for a four-storey structure of approximately 29,000 m2. Assuming 72 GPUs per rack[3] the facility would comprise around 3,000 racks consuming about 130 kW per rack. See footnotes for the third-party reports on which this is based but which the Company has not independently verified.
The 'densification' of the datacentre continues apace. Minihard is reported to occupy materially less space than Macroharder, the previous generation SpaceXAI datacentre, while housing the same compute capacity in a denser configuration.
The initial Earlham Gigagrid facilities are planned to deliver 200MW of IT compute power, half the reported capacity of the Minihard building. Applying the reported Minihard footprint on a linear basis would suggest the Earlham Gigagrid project would require approximately 14,500 m2. Assuming a 50m x 50m offshore platform, that space could be provided over six floors.
This is an illustrative desktop comparison prepared by the Company to indicate order of magnitude only. It is not an engineering study, no offshore platform design has been undertaken, and no assurance is given that an offshore facility of this configuration is technically feasible, financeable or capable of being permitted.
Orcadian is planning on deploying yet more compact and marinised systems. The Directors consider that the reported Minihard specifications indicate that rack power and cooling densities of the order required for an offshore datacentre are already being achieved onshore in practice. The Company would aim to densify further and is targeting a rack power density of over 300 kW per rack, which would materially reduce the space requirement. Whether equivalent or tighter densities can be achieved offshore, where marinisation, weight, seawater cooling and a different consenting regime all apply, remains to be established.
Private wire electricity cost estimate
The Earlham Gigagrid concept provides power and infrastructure to support the deployment of offshore compute, disconnected from the UK grid, and which is designed to minimise Scope 3 emissions. To assess the effective cost of electricity to a compute operator under an offshore private wire arrangement, the Directors have calculated the power price at which the project would deliver target rates of return of 20% for the gas development and 15% for the power station over a twenty-year operating life. On that basis, and assuming that UK Emissions Trading Scheme and Carbon Price Support charges are levied only on the 5% of carbon dioxide not captured and that no Climate Change Levy is charged, the private wire power price would need to be approximately £124/MWh. That would be less than 60% of the price of industrial electricity supplies from the grid, based on DESNZ Table 3.4.1[4] for extra-large industrial consumers during 2026, which is £218/MWh.
The estimate is internally generated, has not been independently verified, and is sensitive to the assumed rates of return and to the Company’s current assumptions as to gas price, capital cost and utilisation. It remains subject to the concept select and validation work still to be undertaken.
Carbon dioxide abatement cost
The Company has also recently completed an analysis of the abatement cost associated with the capture and storage of carbon dioxide at the Earlham project and estimated the incremental cost of carbon capture, discounted at 10%, at about £11 for each tonne of carbon dioxide captured. This estimate excludes UK Emissions Trading Scheme and similar charges, which when applied improve the economics of capture. The equivalent abatement cost in terms of a tonne of carbon is approximately £39. These estimates are internally generated, unaudited and have not been independently verified.
The cost of capture and storage is lower than people might expect because designing carbon capture from the start, rather than retrofitting equipment, is more economical; there are effectively no gathering or transportation costs; corrosion risks can be managed by metallurgy rather than purification of a carbon dioxide stream; and the Capsol system generates additional power rather than purely being a parasitic power drain.
[1] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/musk-confirms-fourth-spacexai-data-center-in-memphis-company-starts-removing-illegal-gas-turbines/
[2] https://mlq.ai/news/musk-confirms-fourth-xai-data-center-in-memphis-as-69-unpermitted-turbines-face-removal/
[3] https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp2357-lenovo-nvidia-gb300-nvl72-rack-scale-ai
[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/gas-and-electricity-prices-in-the-non-domestic-sector
The Company will provide further updates in due course.
Steve Brown, Orcadian CEO, said:
'We compared the Earlham project with the reported SpaceXAI Minihard data centre and were encouraged to find that a facility of those reported dimensions could in principle be accommodated on an offshore platform. Obviously, we will seek to increase the power per rack and to pursue both power distribution and cooling technologies that can further reduce the space requirement, but it is remarkable to be able to point to an onshore analogue at this scale and at this time.
'Since launching this project, we have only gained more confidence that the offshore is the best place to locate a datacentre, and that carbon capture integrated into the power station concept with injection into the reservoir from which the carbon came, is the most efficient way to decarbonise power supply.'
Source: Orcadian Energy
