Why Power Planning Is Becoming an Architectural Issue for Industrial Facilities

Jason Laws for Market Share Blog | September 29, 2026

For decades, architects designing warehouses, distribution centers, and cold storage facilities operated under a simple assumption: grid power is ready when you are. You specified the electrical requirements, coordinated with utilities, and moved on to more pressing design challenges. Power was infrastructure, not something that shaped layouts, square footage, or long-term flexibility.

That assumption no longer holds. Grid constraints are tightening. Facility power demands are increasing. And the equipment inside these buildings, like forklift fleets, has direct implications for floor space, electrical capacity and future expansion. The result: power has become a first-order design consideration, one that can lock in significant costs or significant savings for the life of a building.

Why This Is Now an Architectural Concern

This isn’t about architects becoming electrical engineers. It’s about asking the right questions early, before design decisions get locked in and costly retrofits become the only option.

Consider a recent example: a facility completed construction only to discover its electrical infrastructure couldn’t support planned operations. The fix required microgrids with solar, generators, and battery energy storage, a $10 to $15 million retrofit that could have been avoided with better power planning from the start.

As facilities add automation, increase throughput, and face tighter utility constraints, this kind of scenario is becoming more common. Architects who understand the questions to ask can help clients avoid these outcomes and deliver more valuable projects.

Six Questions to Ask Early in the Design Process:

1. What’s the true footprint of material handling equipment charging?

Most clients underestimate how much space conventional charging setups require. Under typical opportunity charging configurations, where each forklift has its own charger, facilities need roughly 40 square feet per lift just for the charging station, plus lanes for access and maneuvering.

A 50-truck operation can easily require 2,000 to 4,000 square feet dedicated solely to keeping equipment powered. Every square foot allocated to charging is a square foot that can’t hold inventory, support production, or generate revenue. For clients paying by the square foot, this opportunity cost compounds over the building’s lifetime. Ask clients if they’ve calculated this trade-off: what could that 3,000 square feet generate if it held inventory instead of chargers?

2. What’s the electrical infrastructure cost?

Each charger in a conventional setup requires its own electrical drop. At $5,000 to $10,000 per drop in construction costs, a 50-truck facility can exceed $500,000 in electrical infrastructure alone, before a single battery or charger is purchased. This is pure construction cost, baked into the building from day one. Many clients don’t see this number broken out clearly until it’s too late to explore alternatives.

3. How will this scale?