This is a huge amount of investment," CSIRO chief research consultant and AI advisor Stefan Hajkowicz says.Nasdaq-listed tech company IREN is behind the massive data centre, which is proposed to be operating in 2028 at Bundey, two-and-a-half hours north-east of Adelaide."It'll be one of the biggest in the Asia Pacific region ever built," Mr Hajkowicz said.The centre will need up to 800 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of powering around 800,000 Australian homes.Goyder Regional Council Mayor Bill Gebhardt told 7.30 the proposal would be a shot in the arm for the struggling area, creating 500 jobs during construction and 200 ongoing positions."We need some form of growth to keep us going and we need some young ones to be coming continually to the centres," he said."The school's battling at the moment, everything's battling with numbers."So if we can get numbers in the community to keep these things open, it's going to be a game changer for us."Bundey is home to hundreds of sheep but no people As we head past 2030, about 12 per cent of Australia's electricity is the forecast demand," he said."That is an enormous opportunity to use that investment to drive additional electricity generation, new transmission, and to use these centres to support demand management in the grid."Mayor Gebhardt said he understood the division over data centres but was hopeful "once everyone has the facts" there would be broad support for the Bundey proposal."It definitely would be a lifeline … a new lease on life," he said."They've [IREN] offered a community fund, which is significant and that helps our communities."The company has yet to submit a development application."[The proposal has] got a little way to go