A 320 MW AI data centre is proposed for Oakville — on a grid the IESO says is fed from Toronto

What's proposed

A company wants to build one of the largest private facilities Oakville has seen, and it would run on a very large amount of electricity. BUZZ HPC, a subsidiary of the publicly traded HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., announced in May 2026 that it had acquired land in the Greater Toronto Area for an artificial-intelligence data centre it calls an 'AI gigafactory.' Industry and local reporting places the site in north Oakville, at 3480 Ninth Line, and the company's own figures describe its scale: about 25 acres of land, roughly 320 megawatts of electrical capacity, more than 100,000 graphics processors, and a target of coming online in the second half of 2027.

There is an important caveat up front. According to the Town of Oakville's own page on data centres, no formal development application for a data centre has been filed for any Oakville property. What exists today is a company announcement and a land assembly, not an approved project — and the Town has already frozen new data-centre applications on employment land for a year while it studies the use.

What the company says about power

In its May 2026 announcement, HIVE described the site's electricity in two phrases that matter. It said the facility carries 'approximately 320 megawatts of utility capacity' and that it would be 'powered by Ontario's clean grid,' using a closed-loop, no-water cooling approach. In other words, the company is describing a facility that draws its power from the provincial electricity system rather than from an on-site generator.

What the company has not publicly detailed is the connection arrangement: whether 320 megawatts would be delivered through Oakville's local distribution system or through a dedicated high-voltage transmission connection, and what upgrades either path would require. Those are the questions that turn a press release into an engineering project, and they have not been answered on the public record.

What the grid operator says

Independently of the data centre, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has been studying the electricity supply for this part of the Greater Toronto Area. In an August 2026 regional-planning presentation, the IESO describes the group of stations that supplies Oakville — Cooksville, Lorne Park and Oakville transformer stations — and states plainly that the area 'is currently radially supplied from Toronto.' A radial supply means a single supply path, without the looped backbone that lets power reach an area from more than one direction.

To fix that, the IESO's draft options analysis puts a new 230-kilovolt Trafalgar–Oakville transmission line on the table, which it estimates at about $200 million and describes as bringing 'new supply to area which is currently radially supplied from Toronto.' It also costs out a new Palermo transformer station at about $60 million and a $125-million conversion of the circuits that feed the Bronte transformer station. These are options under study, not a final decision.

There is one more figure that frames the data centre against the grid. The IESO notes that its regional demand forecast 'does not include potential transmission-connected large-scale customers' — the category a facility like a 320-megawatt data centre would fall into. That means the 238 megawatts of new local supply the IESO projects Oakville's area will need by 2044 does not count a data centre at all. A 320-megawatt facility would sit on top of that forecast gap, not inside it — larger, on its own, than the entire local shortfall the system operator is already planning to spend to close.

Where the Town stands

The Town of Oakville has not approved anything here, and says it has not received an application. On 11 August 2026, Council passed Interim Control By-law 2026-129, freezing data-centre applications across every employment and Parkway Belt West designation in town for one year while staff study noise, emissions, electricity, water and land-use compatibility. The Town's data-centre page says it is 'aware that land may be under consideration by a proponent for a data centre,' but that no development application has been filed. The freeze runs to 11 August 2027.

What we know, and what we don't

• What we know: the company says it assembled about 25 acres at 3480 Ninth Line for a $3.5-billion AI data centre needing roughly 320 MW, targeting 2027.
• What we know: the IESO says the area that supplies Oakville is radially fed from Toronto and is weighing about $200 million in new transmission, among other options.
• What we know: the Town says no formal development application has been filed, and a one-year freeze on data centres on employment land runs to August 2027.
• What we don't know yet: how the facility would connect to the grid — local distribution or a dedicated transmission connection — and what upgrades that would require.
• What we don't know yet: whether the IESO's proposed Trafalgar–Oakville line is driven by, or would serve, this project, and who would pay for any connection.

What happens next

Two processes will decide this story, and neither has concluded. If the project proceeds, a development application would have to clear the Town's planning process — which is frozen for data centres on employment land until August 2027 — and any large electrical connection would run through the IESO and the local utility. OakvilleIQ will update this story as a formal application, a connection request or an IESO decision reaches the public record.