The firm says it built its forecast using North American Electric Reliability Corp. regional reliability data, U.S. Energy Information Administration capacity and cost benchmarks, GlobalData project-pipeline tracking and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory interconnection research, combined with its own capital-cost modeling.

The report's modeling incorporates about $1.66 trillion in announced data center and advanced-manufacturing investment through 2030, including an estimated $1.25-trillion data center pipeline.

Sustained data center development is the forecast's largest uncertainty, MOCA Systems Chief Economist Brandon Michalski tells ENR, although it is “the biggest driver of our electricity demand growth assumption.”

The report takes pains to strip away one of the data center construction boom's biggest mirages—announced capacity does not necessarily represent a construction-ready project—or one likely to proceed on the developer's timetable. Its modeling separates the headline pipeline from executable work by testing for increasingly concrete infrastructure and capital commitments and late-stage transmission link approval.

For projects expected to advance in 2026 and 2027, the report requires four conditions: a cleared or advanced grid interconnection-queue position, an executed interconnection agreement, reserved transformers, turbines and switchgear, and committed financing. Projects missing any one—particularly equipment reservations—face starts in 2028 or later, the report says.

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Applied to the pipeline, the difference is substantial. Of 12 GW to 16 GW of data-center-related capacity projected for 2026 delivery, MSI estimates only about 5 GW is currently under construction.

Large power transformer lead times have increased from a pre-2020 norm of 24 to 30 months to as much as 128 weeks, while generator step-up transformers can require as long as 144 weeks, according to the report. Heavy-frame gas turbines for combined-cycle plants are being quoted at five to seven years from order to commercial operation.

“You can build the whole project and then have it sitting at risk until those transformers, until those switch gears are available,” Michalski says.

MSI expects the equipment bottleneck to become more manageable beginning in 2028 as manufacturers add production capacity, but Michalski says that assumption depends on announced factory investments actually materializing.

“What specifically changes then is the announced capital expenditure from turbine manufacturers, from switchgear fabrication expansion,” he says. “The biggest risk to that is the failure of the capital expenditures to materialize.”

Transformer manufacturing is also expanding, but its upstream supply chain remains concentrated. Grain-oriented electrical steel, a key transformer-core material, has only one U.S. producer, according to federal records, while MSI estimates imports supply about 80% of domestic demand.

Interconnection timelines further narrow the near-term pipeline. MSI finds projects that reached service from 2022 through 2025 spent a median 46 months in the interconnection process in Texas and nearly 100 months in California. At those historical completion rates, many projects that entered queues as recently as 2024 or 2025 would not reach service until late this decade or beyond, limiting their contribution to MSI's near-term construction forecast.

Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, told ENR he expects demand for additional power and upgrades or replacement of aging generation and transmission facilities to grow strongly over the next several years, but he said he cannot independently assess MSI's spending forecast.

Limited production capacity is constraining natural gas turbines and custom transformers, Simonson said, with transformer production also affected by limited supplies of grain-oriented electrical steel. Beyond equipment, he cited “fierce competition for skilled electricians” among data centers, semiconductor fabrication plants, liquefied natural gas facilities and power projects.

Associated Builders and Contractors Chief Economist Anirban Basu says electrician demand from data center and power construction is “particularly outsized compared to supply,” with average hourly earnings for electricians rising 7.2% over the past year.

While the escalation is relatively insignificant against the overall cost of a data center project, Basu said, it does represent “a serious headwind” for other industries competing with the AI buildout for workers.

Texas state grid operator ERCOT, as well as large multi-state operators PJM Interconnection and Midcontinent Independent System Operator together account for about 87% of MSI's implied generation construction demand through 2030.

Texas dominates that growth. Peak demand there is projected to rise 46.8% through 2030, with MSI estimating $76.2 billion in generation construction tied to incremental demand in the region.

Solar accounts for roughly 74% of MSI's projected capacity additions through 2030. Natural gas is the only dispatchable generation source the firm sees adding capacity at substantial scale, with annual gas construction spending reaching about $29.4 billion by 2030. Nuclear contributes little near-term volume.

As pressure to secure power grows, a separate analysis released Sept. 15 by global insurance broker Howden points to the growing shift away from exclusive reliance on utility-supplied power. Its inaugural data center risk report projects "behind-the-meter" generation co-located at or near users' locations could supply roughly 10 GW, or about 25% of U.S. hyperscale data center power by 2030.

One example is taking shape in southern New Mexico, where Oracle's Project Jupiter AI data center campus is under construction, with a planned on-site power resource exceeding 2 GW. This year, the company replaced a proposed gas-turbine and diesel-generator configuration with a behind-the-meter Bloom Energy fuel-cell microgrid.

Oracle separately sought proposals Sept. 8 for 2 GW of new solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable generation in New Mexico, with projects targeted for delivery between 2027 and 2031 as the tech giant seeks to match Jupiter's electricity consumption with carbon-free generation by 2031.

MSI says the data center and generation buildouts increasingly overlap in the same markets and construction windows, drawing on the same workforce, transformer and substation capacity.

The gap between MSI's lower, EIA-based trajectory and its upper project-pipeline scenario is about 35 GW and $61 billion annually by 2030. Converting that potential into construction depends partly on a material data center buildout, Michalski says, but the upper scenario also assumes nuclear development beyond EIA's baseline.

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Michalski says the upper scenario assumes “a takeoff in small modular nuclear reactors,” an assumption that is not part of other models' baselines. MSI also allows for possible new large-scale nuclear construction.

MSI expects new turbine, transformer and switchgear capacity beginning in 2028 to make the equipment bottleneck more manageable. Whether deferred work converts into construction in the back half of the decade will determine how close the market comes to MSI's $150-billion forecast.