 will develop up to 1GW of data center capacity at its North Yorkshire power station with [Brookfield](https://baxtel.com/data-centers/brookf...](https://cdn.baxtel.com/data-center/drax-brookfield-and-radiant-to-develop-1gw-data-center-at-selby/logo/large_drax-brookfield-and-radiant-to-develop-1gw-data-center-at-selby-featured.jpg){kind=logo}
Drax Group will develop up to 1GW of data center capacity at its North Yorkshire power station with Brookfield and Radiant. The deal was announced on Nov. 3. Brookfield estimates investment in the site could exceed £20 billion ($26.8 billion), including £2.5 billion fo
Featured: Wide landscape editorial photograph of Drax Power Station in Selby showing the facility and cooling towers where the 1GW data center is planned.r the first phase. Phase one targets up to 100MW, operational from the first quarter of 2028.
Drax supplies the land, the station's 4GW grid connection and 2.6GW of dispatchable generation. Radiant, a UK-headquartered AI infrastructure platform owned by Brookfield, designs, builds and operates the compute. Capital comes from the Brookfield-Qai AI joint venture, which pairs Brookfield with Qatar's Qai. No tenant has been named, and Drax says the first phase also needs planning consent, regulatory and network approvals, and a suitable customer.
Phase two would raise capacity to 500MW between 2028 and 2031. Phase three would add capacity after 2031. The power station estate covers 1,000 acres with 4GW of grid access, 2.6GW of active dispatchable generation and existing cooling systems. CNBC reported that the first phase will draw on the grid, that London-listed Drax shares rose more than 8 percent on the news, and that no final investment decision has been made.
"Drax Power Station is one of the few UK sites that can provide large-scale reliable power directly to data centre customers by utilising existing and underutilised generation capacity," said Will Gardiner, chief executive of Drax Group. "By designing, building and operating from the UK, it will give British researchers, startups and enterprises access to frontier compute at home," said Mahdi Yahya, chief executive of Radiant.
Drax had already explored a data center at the site. The company joined North Yorkshire Council and the University of York in a bid to power a 1.2GW facility there through the government's AI Growth Zone programme, which ministers rejected, Data Center Dynamics reported. Drax also holds a ten-year corporate power purchase agreement with Global Switch for its UK operations.
Baxtel lists Drax Group with two planned sites in the Leeds market, Drax: Selby 1 and Drax: Selby Expansion, and counts 20 data center facilities with 27 megawatts of operational capacity across the market.
Community consultation on the plans will begin shortly, and Drax expects to start the formal planning process in the coming months.
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