Grid and generation capacity are not being added fast enough to support the scale of growth many forecasts assume

A looming shortage of electrical power is set to constrain datacenter expansion, potentially leaving many industry growth forecasts looking overly optimistic.

In its latest report, "Five Predictions for 2026," Uptime Institute says that power will become the defining constraint on datacenter growth in 2026 and beyond.

This is because it simply isn't possible to add extra grid and generating capacity at the same rate as new server farms are popping up, so something is going to have to give.

The AI-driven infrastructure boom can be traced back to the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. But even before that, a shortage of available power saw moratoriums slapped on new datacenter builds in Amsterdam, Dublin, and Singapore, as well as delays to projects elsewhere.

Since then, the rate at which new capacity is added has effectively doubled, with Uptime estimating that the total global datacenter power load associated ...