• THE GRID
The Forever Bottleneck
Six words buried in a 47-page Goldman Sachs report stopped me cold this week.
"Power is probably the forever bottleneck."
Not a temporary bottleneck. Not a short-term snag. Forever.
Goldman sees $7.6 trillion in AI spending from 2026 to 2031. That covers chips, data centers, and power. But the power part is where the math falls apart.
Global data center demand will surge 170% by 2030. More than 60% of that lands in the U.S. And the grid can't keep up.
DC Power Demand
+170%
| US Queue
2,600 GW
|
Median Wait
~5 yrs
| New HV Lines 2024
888 mi
|
I’m about to get into this Cybercab… and it’s going to take me to what Elon Musk called…
“The most epic AI project ever.”
Because this is all part of Elon Musk’s $320 trillion masterplan.
That 2,600 GW queue is more than double the grid's installed capacity. And new high-voltage lines? Just 888 miles in 2024. In the early 2010s, we averaged 1,700 a year.
Silicon Valley moves fast. The grid does not.
Since January, 86 data center projects have been canceled or delayed. Of those, 76 were canceled or extensively delayed by local opposition. Noise, water use, and fear of higher bills are winning fights in town halls across the country.
Meanwhile, tech giants are borrowing to build. Goldman sees $420 billion in hyperscaler bonds in 2027. That's 60% above this year's level. Debt will fund about 35% of all capex.
The race used to be about who had the best chip. Or the best model. Not anymore. Now it's about who can plug in first.
And if the grid stays this slow, trillions of dollars sit waiting in queue.
The AI race isn't a chip race. It's a wiring race. And right now, the wire is losing.
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• VOLTAGE
Batteries Just Crossed a Line
For years, gas peaker plants were the quick fix. Need power fast? Burn gas. Simple.
Not anymore.
Wood Mackenzie's latest LCOE report, out October 8, found that four-hour battery storage is now cheaper than open-cycle gas turbines. Not in one market. Not in ten. In all 43 markets they studied. Every region they cover.
Gas peakers are getting squeezed from both sides. The data center boom drove up demand for turbines. And fuel costs stay high. Meanwhile, battery factories keep scaling. Costs keep falling.
In the Middle East and Africa, four-hour storage runs about $120 per MWh. Wood Mackenzie expects a 33% drop to $80 per MWh by 2035 in that region.
Virginia is a good place to watch this play out. The state just passed a law requiring 16 GW of storage by 2045. But Dominion's new IRP, filed October 15, plans for just 3.5 GW. That's a 12.5 GW gap.
NextEra sees the opening. In Q3, it added 2.4 GW of battery storage to its books. That's the fourth straight quarter it added over 3.5 GW of total renewables and storage. Its backlog now sits at 36.7 GW.
Batteries aren't the future of grid power. They're the present. And the utilities that move slowest will lose the most.
• WIRED IN
Signals From the Grid
NextEra posted Q3 results on October 21. Adjusted EPS came in at $1.24, up 9.7% and five cents above the Street. The real story is scale: a 36.7 GW renewables and storage backlog, a 20 GW large-load pipeline, and 16.5 GW in signed federal hub deals with $5.7 billion in initial funding. CEO John Ketchum said the company could build and own 6 to 11 GW of battery storage at those hub sites alone.
Liberty Mutual is stacking energy bets. Its $130 billion investment arm struck four deals in recent weeks targeting energy infrastructure credit, including a $500 million partnership with Elda River Capital focused on energy and power assets. Total commitments across its 2026 partnerships are approaching $1.25 billion. Insurance money is flowing where bank lending used to.
GE Vernova closed at $890 on October 20. That's after raising its 2026 free cash flow guide to $11.5–$12.5 billion — nearly double its prior outlook. Gas turbine demand from data centers keeps the backlog fat. Eaton, which reports November 3, trades near $382 with a 342 GW U.S. data center project pipeline. Both stocks are beating the AI chip names this year.
The GRID ETF sits at $167.91 with $11.6 billion in assets. The Tema VOLT ETF, focused on electrification plays, is at $34.03 with $742 million in assets. VOLT has cooled from its highs but still holds a ~20% gain over the past year. Money keeps flowing into the wires trade even as broader tech wobbles.
The companies building the grid are printing cash. The companies waiting to plug in are printing debt. That gap won't close soon.
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