The conversation around energy generation is impossible to escape; every day brings fresh headlines. Record-breaking heat waves are pushing up electricity demand, while U.S. politics swings between pro-renewable and anti-renewable policies, adding a layer of uncertainty to already-existing layers of regulatory complexity. For investors and shareholders in the global power generation industry, the challenge remains constant: keep assets operating at peak performance, meet return-on-investment expectations, and, ultimately, ensure the lights stay on for the people who just want to come home and enjoy a comfortable space.

Over the past five years, policy momentum strongly favored renewable energy, and meaningful progress has been made. Yet, with current technologies, renewables alone cannot fully deliver the grid reliability needed at scale. This gap is becoming more urgent as artificial intelligence and the explosive growth of U.S. data centers push electricity demand to unprecedented levels. The critical question: What will power the data centers?

Many technology companies are investing in on-site generation, some deploying solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS), others leaning on grid connections with offset mechanisms. But because renewables remain intermittent, gas turbines are once again at the forefront of reliable power generation. Until recently, turbine manufacturers shipped the majority of their units to Asia; now, surging U.S. demand has shifted market dynamics sharply. The result, soaring costs, historic order backlogs, and significant financial barriers. In fact, turbine prices have in some cases doubled or tripled, non-refundable deposits in the millions are now standard, and new orders are often not anticipated to be delivered for at least 3–5 years.

The critical question: What will power the data centers?

The Big Three Manufacturers

Together, Siemens Energy, GE Vernova, and Mitsubishi Power supply roughly two-thirds of global gas turbine demand. Each is working to expand production, though public details remain limited, which continues to affect market prices.

Siemens Energy

• Current backlogs extend to 2030. (Siemens Earnings Release Q3 FY 2025)

GE Vernova

• Plans to increase heavy-duty gas turbine production from ~48 units annually to 70–80 by 2026. (Powermag, 2025)
• Investing $600 million to expand capacity. (GE Vernova Press Release, 2025)
• Reported order backlog valued at over $73 billion, with deliveries stretching to 2030. (Financial Times, 2025)

Mitsubishi Power

• Current turbine backlogs are scheduled through 2028–2030. (Powermag, 2025)
• Expanding its Savannah, Georgia, facility by 30%, though no firm public timeline has been given for completion. (Savannah Business Journal, 2025)

Globally, there are about 2,200 gigawatts (2 terawatts) of installed gas-fired capacity. In the U.S. (Reuters, 2025), there are 987 natural gas-fired power plants based on statistics published in 2022, meaning these numbers are likely higher today (Statista, 2022). The capacity-weighted average age of U.S. natural gas power plants is 22 years, close to the typical 20-year lifespan of both gas turbines and the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) often attached to them.

The math is clear: much of the U.S. fleet is reaching or surpassing its expected design life, forcing owners, CEOs, shareholders, and boards of directors into difficult decisions about capital allocation, life extension, or replacement. Reliable electricity supply is now a common topic of boardroom conversation for almost all rapidly growing businesses.

Two Options to Fill the Supply Gap

Pay and Hope

Securing a turbine order despite steep costs and long lead times ensures you are in line for delivery, and buying new equipment comes with full manufacturer support, performance guarantees, and long-term service agreements (LTSA) which can reduce operational risk compared to extended-life assets. On the other hand, if existing assets fail or demand spikes sooner than expected, waiting and hoping for delivery of new turbine-generators could lead to production shortfalls, factory/facility downtime, and/or lost business opportunities and revenue.

Life Extension of Existing Assets

The second option is to extend the production life of existing power generation assets. To meet the business objective, lifetime assessment must collect, view, and analyze micro-level information regarding the physical condition and operating performance of key critical equipment in the power plant. Identifying the “key and critical” equipment is an essential early step; associated criteria include equipment failures resulting in:

• Unsafe conditions or
• Harmful releases to the environment or
• Total loss of power generation
• Partial loss of power generation
• Loss of generation efficiency (more input fuel required)

Equipment single-point failures are given special focus, life assessment boundaries expanded to include power plant fuel supply, water supply, and power off-take interconnections.

After identifying “key and critical” equipment in the power plant, a proper life assessment next turns to end-of-life characterization for each type. What does terminal failure or end-of-life look like? What are its symptoms? Are the symptoms progressive, and if so, can they be measured and tracked over time? Absent this step, our assessment will be adrift at the back end, lacking effective actions and credible conclusions.

Our third major step in the power plant life assessment is to deep-dive into (a) design life factors expressed by the original manufacturers, (b) historical and recent operations, maintenance, and engineering data enabling insight into present-day condition and performance; and (c) the present-day gap between the two. This step consumes the majority of our time and energy during the assessment. Any holes found in our data serve as a basis for additional engineering studies undertaken within the plant.

Follow-on Activity

A well-performed power plant life assessment provides necessary knowledge, but alone is not actionable in the company boardroom. The assessment team must thereafter connect with purchasing department staff to obtain vendor quotations for whichever equipment was found to be either approaching the end of life now or forecast to reach the end of life during the foreseen extended operating period. This allows us to budget and plan the anticipated capital expenditures for things like boiler tubes, step-up transformers, and high-pressure steam piping.

How Can We Help?

Productive Outcomes serves as an Owner's Representative; an integral member of the owner’s organization to monitor, measure, and manage the financial performance of an enterprise, project, or portfolio using discipline and proven best practices. We provide roadmaps to success in solving difficult and unusual problems in support of physical asset management, encompassing the entire life cycle ranging from new power project development, through new construction and operating phases, to power plant decommissioning at end of life.

Contact Us to Discuss Your Project at: proposals@poadvisory.com

Sources

• Sonal Patel, April 2025, Gas Power's Boom Sparks A Turbine Supply Crunch, https://www.powermag.com/gas-powers-boom-sparks-a-turbine-supply-crunch
• GE Vernova, 2025, Press Release, https://www.gevernova.com/news/press-releases/ge-vernova-invest-almost-600-million-us-factories-facilities-over-next-two-years
• Michela Tindera and Amanda Chu, May 2025, Transcript: GE Vernova Tries to Shake Its Parent's Problems, https://www.ft.com/content/e6c4f2b4-a5c5-4069-97af-bfecb336785b
• SBJ Staff Report, Aug. 2025, Savannah's Mitsubishi Power Produces Combustion Turbine for Georgia Power, https://www.savannahbusinessjournal.com/news/manufacturing/aug-20-savannah-s-mitsubishi-power-produces-gas-combustion-turbine-for-georgia-power/article_a2c5e5fd-dfdf-415d-8a7f-b0414ea93f15.html
• Gavin Maguire, Aug. 2025, US Gas Heavy Power Pipeline Set to Stoke LNG Exporter Tensions, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-gas-heavy-power-pipeline-set-stoke-lng-exporter-tensions-2025-08-20m
• Statista, Dec. 2023, Number of Natural Gas Power Stations Worldwide as of 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1281761/number-of-gas-power-plants-by-country