The appetite for AI compute is rewriting the rules of American energy infrastructure. Bloom Energy’s 2026 Data Center Power Report projects that AI data center capacity will nearly double its share of new additions, climbing from 13% in 2026 to 23% by 2030.
That trajectory matters because US data center operators are expected to add 55 gigawatts of IT capacity over the next five years. The current installed base sits at roughly 25 GW.
The grid can’t keep up
Power availability has become the single most important factor in deciding where to build a data center. According to Bloom Energy’s survey, 84% of data center operators now cite it as their top site selection criterion.
That bottleneck is forcing a dramatic pivot. Projections for onsite power generation have exploded year over year. By 2030, between 27% and 38% of data center facilities are expected to rely on onsite power to meet their primary energy needs. For context, the previous year’s survey pegged that figure at just 13%.
Even more striking: 27% of data centers are expected to be fully powered onsite by 2030. Last year, that number was 1%.
Texas and the gigawatt campus era
Texas is emerging as the critical market for data center development, with projected grid demand potentially surpassing 40 GW by 2028.
Scale is also shifting in ways that would have seemed absurd five years ago. One in five data center campuses is expected to exceed 1 GW of capacity by 2030. By 2035, that ratio climbs to one in three.
Where crypto fits in
There’s a notable subplot in Bloom Energy’s findings that connects directly to the crypto world. The report indicates that existing infrastructure is being repurposed for AI workloads, particularly by Bitcoin miners.
A Bitcoin mining facility and an AI data center share the same fundamental requirement: massive, reliable electricity at competitive rates. The physical infrastructure—power distribution, cooling systems, grid interconnections—translates surprisingly well. What changes is the hardware inside and the customer writing the checks.