Speed to Power: Getting Large Sites Online Faster

October 22, 2026

Demand is outrunning the grid

Electricity demand is rising faster than the grid can be built to serve it. Data centers are the most visible source, but they are far from the only one. Factories are electrifying their processes, vehicle fleets are moving to batteries, ports and mines are replacing diesel, and new buildings are going all-electric. New high-voltage transmission can take close to a decade to deliver, so for site developers across all of these industries, the time between securing a site and drawing full power has become one of the largest lost opportunities in a project.

In its analysis of the data center race, Wood Mackenzie's Q3 2026 Power & Renewables Compass looks at three faster routes to capacity: virtual power plants, grid enhancing technologies, and around-the-meter projects that bypass the grid connection. Each can deliver capacity in weeks to a few years rather than a decade, and each depends on conditions that energy storage at the site can help meet. The same holds well beyond data centers. Speed to power now depends as much on what happens at the site as on what happens on the transmission network.