Wood Mackenzie published an analysis on 30 October that puts numbers on the main bottleneck for US data centers: power. According to its chairman and chief analyst, US utilities have now committed to connect 201 GW of new data center capacity, and if all of it is built, electricity demand in the country would rise by 30%.
Waiting for a connection
The firm gives the grid connection wait as 54 months at best in Virginia and 84 months in Ohio, which means a project that starts in Ohio today would have no supply from the grid until 2033. Equipment is the second queue. Wood Mackenzie quotes 278 weeks for heavy frame gas turbines, 162 weeks for transformers and 137 weeks for circuit breakers. It adds that lawmakers have called 400 moratoriums on data center proposals, and that about a fifth of the projects under development have been held up by at least one of them.
Its view on timing is blunt: nothing on the table delivers new supply at scale in 2027 or 2028 beyond what is already committed. The priority, in its words, is to connect the 201 GW already in the pipeline before demand ramps further, since adding more projects to the queue now would only slow things down.
Where on-site generation fits
Behind-the-meter projects are 15% of the pipeline by project count but 40% of planned capacity, so those that choose to generate on site are the larger ones. The analysis describes this supply as mostly gas-fired and increasingly backed by batteries that can discharge quickly. It calls the approach flexible but expensive and engineering-intensive, and notes that few developers see it as a long-term plan. It also mentions that developers are looking at how such resources could make a campus interruptible, which would give the grid some flexibility in return for a faster connection.
Wood Mackenzie also describes the difference between market types. In unregulated markets the data center can choose its supplier and generate its own power, but planning for large loads and for new generation is done separately. In regulated markets the utility can plan both together.
What it means at the generator end
If the grid date slips by years, the standby plant is no longer just insurance. Sets that were specified for a few hours of testing a year may be asked to run for long periods first, and that changes the fuel logistics, the maintenance plan and, above all, the air permit. We have seen the questions regulators ask in New Jersey and Walker County, and they sound different when the application describes months of running rather than emergencies. Decide early which of the two the site is, and make sure the paperwork says the same thing as the plant.
Sources: Wood Mackenzie, Universal Asset Owners