Data center headlines ricochet between AI demand, the power crunch, and supply-chain bottlenecks.
It’s the perfect storm, creating friction at every stage of data center development and deployment. But this framing misses the point. Time and certainty, not energy, are now the scarcest resources for the industry.
As hyperscalers rush to plan and build 100GW+ campuses, interconnection backlogs surpassed 2,600GW of generation and storage capacity in 2024, while concerns over energy costs and grid reliability continue to rise. In response, behind-the-meter generation has become the default strategy.
By building power onsite, developers can avoid the most time-consuming parts of the process—notably high-voltage grid interconnection, which can take a decade or more from request to operation. It is one of the primary reasons that up to 80 percent of projects in connection queues are ultimately withdrawn.
The Critical Power Supplement
