{"id":436399,"date":"2026-08-18T01:24:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T18:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/power-is-inevitably-going-to-be-a-bottleneck-436399\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T01:24:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T18:24:33","slug":"power-is-inevitably-going-to-be-a-bottleneck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/power-is-inevitably-going-to-be-a-bottleneck-436399\/","title":{"rendered":"Power is inevitably going to be a bottleneck"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Have a look at this chart.<\/p>\n

It shows\u00a0 It is showing 69.1 GW of nominal data-centre IT capacity scheduled for delivery from August of this year through 2028.<\/p>\n

The problem (or one of the problems) is going to be powering it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The US had roughly 35\u201344 GW of nominal data-centre IT capacity in 2024 and projects 56\u2013132 GW by 2030. That’s a potential tripling and you can see it unfolding in this chart.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I’m skeptical it will get built on time at all, as shipping a broken app update is much easier than finishing a building and procuring all the chips and racks to run it. If that somehow takes place then the next bottleneck is even tighter — power.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, states are demanding that data centers supply their own power and now they’re trying to co-generate, usually with natural gas turbines. The problem is that there is only so much manufacturing capacity for power and the backlogs are now huge. Within that, there are all kinds of components as well, including transformers that are particularly backed up.<\/p>\n

If somehow they pull that off, the final final potential problem is fuel for the turbines. If 75% of this is powered by natural gas, taht’s arond 8.6 Bcf\/d. The good news is that there is a surplus of gas right now, the bad news is that surplus is already going to be eaten up by LNG exports as those are slated to balloon with new facilities coming online also in the 2025-2029 window.\u00a0LNG liquefaction capacity is on track to add about 13.9 Bcf\/d between 2025 and 2029, according to the EIA.<\/p>\n

The latest EIA data puts US production at 116.0 Bcf\/d in 2027 so this additional data center demand would eat about 5% and it’s more than the entire EIA increase forecast in 2026 and 2027.<\/p>\n

Add it all up and the US will need to add 10 Bcf\/d in production in two years. It can be done and gas is plentiful but there needs to be a price signal and front-month gas now at $2.69 isn’t it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the hyperscalers actually pull off the capex, I could see a floor for gas near $5 and a range of $5-8 depending on the weather. It’s an interesting spot to watch but it’s a hard one to trade because I have some real skepticism that the data centers get built on time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have a look at this chart. It shows\u00a0 It is showing 69.1 GW of nominal data-centre IT capacity scheduled for delivery from August of this year through 2028. The problem (or one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}