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Compute and power bottleneck

Power as the project clock

Connecting a new data centre to the grid can take longer than building its computing halls.

The IEA identifies electricity as a local infrastructure constraint for data centres: capacity is concentrated in a few clusters while grids and generation expand more slowly than compute halls. The next scale-up is therefore timed not only by chip delivery but by the physical connection of megawatts.

Sources
IEA · Energy and AIOpen primary source IEA · key questions 2026Open primary source