Data centre builders are ordering generators two years ahead and committing to suppliers before designs are final, as shortages of power equipment and skilled labour push speed of delivery above cost. The picture emerged from the "Scaling Under Scarcity: Delivering Projects Amid Shortages" panel at Capacity Europe 2026 in London on 14 October, featuring procurement and engineering leaders from Greenscale, Start Campus, Telehouse and Kentik.

Power equipment is the most visible bottleneck. High-voltage transformers, gas-insulated switchgear and generator engines are all in short supply, and some suppliers are already warning that their capacity is fully committed. Ozgur Duzgunoglu, head of engineering and design at Telehouse, said generators can take two years to arrive and high-voltage transformers 12 to 18 months; in one recent case, his team faced a deadline of the following Friday to order generators that would not arrive for two years.

Procurement teams must keep chasing manufacturers to protect their production slots, because a hyperscaler can step in and order hundreds more units. "We're worried about cost and lead times, where I believe we should be worried about capacity," said Miriam van Kooperen, senior director of supply chain at Greenscale — a succinct summary of an industry whose long focus on negotiating the lowest price has given way to securing manufacturing slots.

Nelson Pinto de Magalhaes, director of PMO and procurement at Start Campus, which is developing a hyperscale campus in Portugal, noted that long-lead equipment can largely be managed through early commitments. The harder task, he said, is making sure equipment, installers and commissioning teams all land in the same window — particularly as the way AI is deployed continues to change rapidly.

Background and analysis. The AI buildout has collided with the physical limits of the power equipment supply chain, and grid connection queues have compounded the strain. Ordering early is now a competitive weapon as much as a logistics decision — but it carries risk: committing to equipment before designs are final raises the stakes on stranded assets if requirements shift mid-project. The scarcity dynamic also favours the largest buyers, whose order books can crowd smaller developers out of production slots entirely.

Our take. This is the less glamorous side of the AI boom — turbines, transformers and switchgear rather than GPUs. For fast-growing markets such as Southeast Asia, where new campuses compete for the same global equipment pool, the lesson is stark: capacity is secured years in advance, and the regions that plan procurement earliest will be the ones that actually get built.

Source: Capacity, "Two-year generator waits push data centre builders to procure before they design", 15 October 2026. https://capacityglobal.com/news/two-year-generator-waits-push-data-centre-builders-tp-procure/