Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTMichael KernSat, August 22, 2026 at 11:00 PM GMT+2 10 min readOrder a heavy-duty gas turbine from GE Vernova today and it won't arrive until 2031. That's the company's actual production schedule, confirmed on its July 22 earnings call, and it's the fact sitting underneath every AI data center power plan announced in the last two years. It comes up far less often than the announcements do.Goldman Sachs put hard numbers on the demand side in May. U.S. data center power demand climbs from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 41 GW this year and 66 GW in 2027. Year-over-year capacity additions accelerate from 8.5 GW actually realized last year to 13.6 GW scheduled for 2026 and 36.3 GW scheduled for 2027. By then data centers would take 8.5% of total U.S. peak summer demand, up from 4.1% today.The equipment meant to generate that power is on a completely different clock.The Big Three Are Booked Solid Into the 2030sGE Vernova closed the second quarter with 116 GW of gas power equipment backlog and slot reservation agreements, up from 100 GW three months earlier and 83 GW at the end of 2025. It expects at least 125 GW under contract by December. CEO Scott Strazik told analysts the company is taking reservations for 2031 delivery and should be more than halfway contracted for that year by the end of 2026. Its production plan: roughly 20 GW annualized this quarter, 24 GW by 2028, and a push toward 30 GW by 2030.Siemens Energy ended its fiscal third quarter on June 30 with a 69 GW gas turbine backlog after booking 15 GW and shipping six. Lead times run three years or more. CEO Christian Bruch told analysts the addressable market could reach 120 GW a year, roughly half of it American.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries reported a 35 GW large-frame backlog on Aug. 6, up from 23 GW a year earlier. That figure covers Mitsubishi's fiscal first quarter, which runs March through June, so it lags roughly a month behind the calendar-quarter numbers above. CFO Hiroshi Nishio said orders booked during the quarter are scheduled for delivery between 2028 and 2030, and that the company is "being selective in the projects we contract."Add the three headline numbers and you get 220 GW, which overstates the case, because none of them is counting the same thing. Of GE Vernova's 116 GW, only 53 GW is firm equipment backlog; the other 63 GW is slot reservations, paid options that haven't converted to orders yet. Siemens' 69 GW is firm backlog with no reservations mixed in. Mitsubishi's 35 GW covers large-frame turbines only, leaving out its aeroderivative and mid-size lines. None of the three would explain what the other two mean by "backlog" without a footnote.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info