The High Cost of Waiting for Power
Power delay often results in lost revenue, business and reputation damage, and higher operating costs. So, why do companies wait?
For decades, businesses like ports, oil & gas sites, and industrial facilities could make decisions about where to build, expand, or operate with a reasonable expectation that electricity would be available when it was needed.
That assumption is getting harder to make.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) forecasts 224 GW of additional summer peak electricity demand over the next 10 years, and new generation and transmission infrastructure isn’t keeping pace.
For businesses caught in between, this creates a much more immediate problem than electricity supply: the project may be ready to make money before the power is ready to turn on.
- An oil & gas operation without reliable power may lose millions while production sits in the ground.
- A port without sufficient electrical infrastructure may face cargo spoilage, while equipment, projects, and capital are waiting to be put to work.
- A food and beverage facility with a power outage risks spoilage, lost customers, and reputational damage.
The power problem quickly becomes a revenue problem.
Start With the Number That Matters: What Is Waiting Costing You?
Power projects are traditionally evaluated using metrics like cost per kilowatt-hour, efficiency, emissions, fuel cost, and maintenance expense.
Those metrics still matter, but there's another number that businesses facing a power constraint should calculate first: what is every day, week, or month without power worth to the business?
Consider a hypothetical facility expected to generate $120 million in annual revenue once operational. That's an average of $10 million in revenue per month.
If energization is delayed six months (a typical grid delay or generator capacity backlog), as much as $60 million in revenue is shifted into the future. That doesn't mean $60 million in profit is permanently lost. But it does mean the business has invested in an asset that isn't yet producing the revenue it was intended to generate.
And the clock is running. Suddenly, the lowest-cost electricity isn't necessarily the option with the lowest $/kWh. It may be the option that gets the business operating sooner.
For Data Centers, Time-to-Power Is Becoming Time-to-Revenue
The scale of the power challenge is particularly visible in data centers.
According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. data centers consumed approximately 176 TWh of electricity in 2023—about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption. Berkeley Lab's 2026 update estimates data centers could consume 9.5% to 15.3% of U.S. electricity by 2030, with an 11.8% central estimate.
Globally, the International Energy Agency projects data center electricity consumption will more than double to approximately 945 TWh by 2030—slightly more electricity than Japan consumes today. In the U.S., the IEA expects data centers to account for nearly half of electricity-demand growth through 2030.
Those numbers matter because data center economics are highly dependent on getting capacity online. If buildings, IT infrastructure, and customers are ready but sufficient power isn't available, revenue can be deferred while invested capital waits.
That makes time-to-power more than an engineering consideration. It's a revenue consideration, too.
In Oil & Gas, Power = Production
The calculation looks different in oil & gas, but the principle is the same.
Consider a simple hypothetical example: an operation producing 5,000 barrels per day that loses seven days to a power constraint defers 35,000 barrels of deferred production. At $70 per barrel, that's $2.45 million in gross production value deferred before considering royalties, operating costs, hedging, transportation, or other factors.
The specific number will be different for every operator and site, and that's precisely the point.
Operators should know what an hour, a day, or a week without reliable power means to their operation. Because when power enables production, its economic value isn't limited to what it costs per kWh. It's also connected to the value of what the power allows the site to produce.
At Ports, Electrification Investment Only Creates Value When It Can Operate
The same issue is emerging as ports electrify.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports Program is funding nearly $3 billion across 53 projects supporting low-emission equipment and infrastructure. Those projects include more than 1,500 pieces of cargo-handling equipment, 1,000 drayage trucks, and 20 vessels, along with charging infrastructure, shore power, battery storage, and other electrical infrastructure.
Every one of those investments ultimately depends on electricity. If electrical infrastructure isn't available when equipment and projects are ready, organizations risk having capital deployed before the infrastructure needed to fully utilize it is available. The goal isn't simply to secure enough power eventually. It's to have power available when the asset needs to start creating value.
Waiting Isn't the Only Option
The answer isn't to abandon the grid. It's to stop assuming waiting for the grid is always the only option.
Distributed on-site generation can give businesses another path. Depending on the application, power can be generated at or near the point where it’s consumed and when it’s needed, supplementing utility capacity or supporting a longer-term distributed energy strategy. Capstone Energy+’s behind-the-meter microturbine systems are built for exactly that kind of rapid, on-site deployment.
Capstone can get temporary or bridge power on-site in days, not months or years, which turns “deploying now, start operating” into a real option.
That changes the financial comparison. Instead of:
- Utility power vs. on-site power: Which has the lowest $/kWh?
The question becomes:
Put a Price on Every Month You Wait
Every project is different. On-site generation isn't automatically the right answer, and neither is rental power. But every business facing a power delay should know three numbers: how long the wait is likely to be, what that wait is costing the business, and what it would cost to get some or all of that operation online sooner.
At Capstone, we believe power infrastructure should enable the business timeline—not dictate it. Power should work on your terms, not the grid’s.
Through distributed energy and rapidly deployable rental solutions, we help customers evaluate ways to generate power on-site, on demand, and on their terms.
Because the most expensive power may not be the power you generate. It may be the revenue you never generate while you're waiting for it.
