Gas turbine developments |


(Google), and Meta, spent $228 billion on data centre infrastructure/construction in 2024. They planned a combined $320 billion of new data centre spending in 2025.


“Over the next three years, the data centre market is poised to receive 35 GW of new capacity, of which 30% is expected to be dedicated to AI workloads,” said Hannam. “Realising this AI-based capacity will require approximately $120 billion in capital deployment and a real estate footprint of 120 to 150 million square feet.”


Data centres used to be located based on proximity to large metropolitan areas – New York, DC, Silicon Valley were kings. But that is changing. Loudoun County and Prince William County (both in Virginia and adjacent to Washington, DC) are known as Data Center Alley. They already have more than 5 GW of existing capacity and have as much again under development, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). However, their local utility doesn’t have any more power it can deliver to data centres. Hence, they are looking elsewhere.


Power availability now largely trumps proximity to metro areas as the biggest driver for new construction. Some areas are lucky enough to have excess capacity available. But in many cases, the race is on to build new generation facilities fast enough to fuel AI demand. The question is, can GT OEMs and their supply chain partners get their act together fast enough to capitalise on the opportunity?


Pants down


The industry could be accused of getting caught with its pants down when the AI boom emerged. Most gas turbine OEMs have been a party to the slow decline of the industry over the past decade or so. They all promoted their green energy, renewable, and hydrogen-driven assets far more than straightforward gas generation. They were conspicuously absent from the year’s largest power industry event – PowerGen International. GE Vernova hasn’t bought a booth there for almost a decade. Instead, the big OEMs have been promoting energy transition strategies and condoning through inaction, the gradual end of gas turbine generation.


There has been a trend towards renaming


companies to sound more cuddly and less tainted by oil & gas or energy/power associations: GE Power became GE Vernova; Statoil of Norway became Equinor; and MAN Energy Solutions (formerly MAN Diesel & Turbo) just became Everllence. Hopefully, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Power won’t fall prey to this trend. In their defense, the entire industry has been assailed with endless propaganda about the evils of gas generation. Environmental advocates painted gas with the same brush as coal. It got to the point where the only large gas turbine that could be sold was one that was “hydrogen-ready” even though there rarely was any hydrogen available to power it with.


But the fact is, the signs of a boom were there in late 2022 when ChatGPT brought AI into the mainstream. The entire planet knew about it. GT OEMs didn’t respond significantly until 2025. Too slow – hopefully not fatally so. It is only this year that we are suddenly hearing what GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Power are doing to boost production capacity.


Mitsubishi recently announced that it is doubling manufacturing capacity for gas turbines within the next two years to serve the artificial intelligence and data centre market. Earlier this year, GE Vernova’s said it was expanding capacity by around 35% at its 1.5 million square foot GT manufacturing plant in Greenville, South Carolina. That will take it from 55 heavy frame units per year (14 GW of simple cycle capacity) to 70 to 80 units per year beginning in the second half of 2026 and shipping approximately 20 gigawatts annually starting in 2027. The company is investing $160 million in Greenville to achieve this. Similarly, Siemens Energy announced expansion plans for its Gibsonton, Florida, site where it manufactures blades and vanes. The company is adding 61 000 square feet to the Gibsonton site and beefing up its combustion component output in Hungary while also preparing its Saudi Arabian facility to manufacture H-class turbines.


Meanwhile, announcements of partnerships between turbine OEMs and North American utilities or hyperscalers are an almost weekly occurrence.


GE Vernova signed a deal with NRG Energy and Kiewit covering four combined cycle plants (5 GW) for the ERCOT and PJM markets due online between 2029 and 2032. The company also has a partnership with NextEra Energy to develop multiple gigawatts of natural gas-fired power generation projects to feed AI data centres and other large electricity users.


And Duke Energy inked a deal for up to 11 GE Vernova 7HA gas turbines in addition to eight 7HAs secured recently.


Interestingly, Tony Brough, President of Dora Partners & Co, says the backlog extends far beyond large turbines for combined cycle plants. He noted that units of all sizes down to 5 MW are being ordered in numbers. Solar Turbines, too, is enjoying an order boom and accumulating a growing backlog.


Late to the party


Had gas turbine OEMs been unapologetically and aggressively selling the value of natural gas generation for the past decade and trying to boost sales rather than conceding defeat to renewables, they might have cottoned onto the AI boom in late 2022/early 2023 and taken immediate and bold actions to prepare. As it is, they are late to the party, perhaps too late. A Google executive complained on stage at a recent data centre event about the lack of availability of gas turbines and expressed intent to find other sources of power.


“Energy infrastructure takes time to build,” said Lucia Tian, head of clean energy & decarbonisation at Google. “Slots for new gas turbines are now going out to 2030.” Brough estimated at the start of 2025 that undelivered orders stand at around 60 GW, with perhaps another 30 GW in existence in unreported reservations. That backlog has increased markedly due to a surge in orders in the course of the year.


This is no time to have a mounting gas turbine backlog of such proportions. Time will tell whether AI data centres are prepared to wait until the end of the decade and beyond for more gas turbines or if they will open their very deep pockets to other sources of power such as nuclear energy, batteries, gas piston engines, and renewables.


US DOE seeks information on how to increase gas turbine production capacity to meet growing demand


The US Department of Energy’s Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office (HGEO) has issued a request for information (RFI) aimed at evaluating challenges faced by US manufacturers that currently constrain gas turbine production capacity. Natural gas turbines offer several benefits for domestic


electricity generation, including high operational flexibility, efficiencies, and reliability, says US DOE. According to the US Energy Information Administration, US


electricity demand, which remained relatively flat over the last two decades, is now expected to grow at an average rate of 1.7% per year in the short-term forecast and to exceed 6000 terawatt- hours per annum by 2050, a 50% increase from 2024 levels.


Such demand — due in part to rapid growth in data centres and artificial intelligence, reshoring of American manufacturing, and increased electrification — will strain equipment supply chains, especially gas turbines, which provide more than 40% of electricity in the United States, US DOE estimates. Further, with the recent spike in electricity demand, the


delivery wait time for gas turbines has doubled from two to three years to as many as seven years, resulting in price increases due to the limited supply. Such long lead times and high prices threaten to constrain the effective supply of electricity to meet demand.


The deadline for responses to the RFI is 30 January 2026.


26 | November/December 2025| www.modernpowersystems.com


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