Google says grid connections can take five to ten years as AI data centers expand
Google says utilities quote five to ten years for grid connections, and Goldman Sachs calls power the biggest risk to $7.6 trillion in AI-era spending.
The most valuable thing in Super Intelligence right now is not a chip. It is a place in line for electricity.
Google's Marsden Hanna put it plainly: "The biggest challenge for us, for data center growth, is really grid congestion." He added: "We have utilities telling us it can be five years, sometimes ten years, if you want to take grid-connected service."
Goldman Sachs, in a report shared with Axios, expects global data center power demand to surge 170% between 2025 and 2030, with more than 60% of that growth in the U.S. The bank estimates roughly $7.6 trillion in capital spending from 2026 to 2031 across computing, data centers and power infrastructure. Its Jason Tofsky calls power "probably the forever bottleneck."
Here is the mismatch. Companies are hoping for service in one to two years, and Kathryn Burke of insurer Marsh predicts 50 to 60% of projects will miss that window, according to Fortune. Berkeley Lab research, also cited by Fortune, found U.S. power projects that came online in 2025 took a median of five years from connection request to commercial operation.
The context: Fortune reports that OpenAI, Google and Meta can finance and build AI infrastructure faster than the U.S. can build the generation and transmission to power it.
My take: capital is abundant, and that is exactly why it no longer separates winners from losers. The company with a signed connection date holds the advantage, and a projected $7.6 trillion buildout depends on getting one.
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The 2,600 gigawatts waiting in interconnection queues is the number to footnote: the report itself says many of those projects may never materialize, so the queue measures hope, not capacity.
Fortune says data centers may have to accept provisional connections that can be interrupted when the grid is strained. Compute that can lose power when the grid is strained is a different proposition. I'd want that interruption risk reflected in the price.
