AI's limit isn't chips or money. It's how fast we can plug in.
$50
capex per watt
vs ~$3 of power over 5 years. Waiting costs far more than electricity.
3–7 yrs
to connect to the grid
So builders go behind the meter: gas, batteries, solar.
~100 GW
hiding in the grid
If data centers flex ~100 hours a year.
14×
cheaper batteries since 2010
Solar + storage now looks like baseload. Nuclear, fusion and space come next.
IN
India has the same race but a different bottleneck: plenty of new solar, but too few transmission lines and too little firm evening power.
Thesis summarised from the episode and the presenter's slides.
USA
Themes
Agenda of the talk.
AI is Power Hungry
USA
Compute is Expensive Power is Cheap
USA
USA
AI CapEx / Watt vs 5 Year Energy Cost
As presented in the talk. 5-year energy cost ≈ 1 W × 43,800 h at US industrial power prices.
INDIA
India view
Same math in India: GPUs cost 10–20× their 5-year power bill
DATA CENTER POWER PRICE
₹7–10/kWh
state utility tariff
₹4–7/kWh
green open access / group captive
The chips are imported at global prices, so capex per watt is about the same as in the US. Cheaper power makes compute an even bigger share of the cost.
Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “Queued Up” — time from interconnection request (IR) to interconnection agreement (IA). Values approximated from the slide.
USA
Large-Load Grid Connection Waits Are Increasing
Over 7 months, delivery times increased by 6-7 months
Approximate values digitized from Bloom Energy data center power reports.
USA
ERCOT’s current large load interconnection queue
Source: Electric Reliability Council of Texas
INDIA
India view
India's data center load is set to grow 4–5× by 2030
US gas-fired turbine wait times as much as seven years; costs up sharply
Large, Multi- 100MW Turbines
USA
Siemens SGT-A45 mobile (trailer-mounted) 41 MW gas turbine, Bayat Power-1. Photo: Mahbubehp, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
ONE OPTION : SMALL GAS TURBINES
[~ 1/3 OF PROJECTS]
18 – 36 Month Backlog
USA
INDIA
India view
India's power plants on standby: an idle gas fleet
20.1 GW
gas fleet left after ~5 GW of long-idle plants were retired (Apr)
12.5 GW
could be used as fast peaker plants to back up renewables
Behind the meter in India often means green open access
Captive or group-captive solar and wind contracts at ₹4–7/kWh, vs ₹7–10 from state utilities. Higher LNG demand from data centers is starting to bring stranded gas plants back.
The study measures how much new, flexible load the existing US grid could absorb without building new capacity. It covers 22 of the largest balancing authorities, which serve 95% of US peak demand. Its key concept is “curtailment-enabled headroom”: new load that fits under planned peaks as long as it can be briefly scaled back during the tightest hours.
1.7–2.5 h
average length of a curtailment event
~90%
of curtailment hours still keep at least half of the new load running
PJM 18 GW
largest single region (at 0.5%), then MISO 15, ERCOT 10, SPP 10
$/W figures are my own division of press-reported cost by nameplate; costs are mostly financing totals or announced budgets, not audited. Batteries are a different share of each project, so rows are not like-for-like. Firm 24/7 power costs far more per watt than daytime solar.
A simple map of the main approaches to fusion energy
USA
Fusion Startups: Claimed Timelines to Power
Leading private fusion companies and their stated commercialization milestones, mid-2026
ⓘ Timelines are company-stated / aspirational.
INDIA
India view
India's fusion effort is state-led, and private startups are just starting
IPR GANDHINAGAR
ADITYA-U · SST-1
India's own tokamaks. SST-1 is the country's first fully superconducting tokamak.
ITER MEMBER SINCE 2005
3,850-t cryostat
India built ITER's largest component, a 30 m × 30 m vacuum chamber.
PRANOS FUSION (2024)
PRAGYA tokamak
India's first private tokamak. Compact (R = 0.40 m), $417k angel round in 2025.
IN
US: 40+ companies, $6B. India: one startup. Its edge is ITER-grade manufacturing.
Images: tokamak schematic, Smith & Cowley, CC BY 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons) · ITER cryostat render, Image: ITER Organization · PRAGYA model, Photo: Soumya Pillai / ThePrint. The first schematic is illustrative, not the Indian machines.
wave energy potential along India's ~7,500 km coastline
10 MW
OTEC power plant, project report under the Deep Ocean Mission
Kavaratti, Lakshadweep: India's first OTEC plant
NIOT is using the ocean's temperature gradient to run desalination off-grid (100 m³/day). A wave-powered navigation buoy is already working off Kamarajar Port, Chennai.
IN
No ocean data center projects yet. Islands are the natural first test sites.
