Flexibility is Key in Confronting Power Constraints in Industrial

Jonathan Rollins for Market Share Blog | October 7, 2026

For most of the past two decades, power was the easy part of industrial deals. Developers could simply obtain a will-serve letter from the utility and move on. As a CREDA Conference session on the ways power constraints are reshaping industrial development made clear, that era is over.

Panelist Mehul Desai, project executive at Saxum Real Estate, framed the problem with two numbers. U.S. power demand grew just 0.1% to 0.2% per year from 2005 to 2020; since 2020, it has grown 1.7% to 2% a year. And while the country has installed roughly 1,200 gigawatts (GW) of capacity over the past century, applications for about 2,300 GW are pending for the next five years.

“In the data center world, we’re dealing with things a gigawatt and above, but we also have significant power issues in the 3- to 5-megawatt range as well,” noted moderator Pat Lynch, executive managing director and global leader for CBRE’s data center and digital infrastructure business.

Four Lessons from the Panel

1. A will-serve letter is not a guarantee. Desai recalled a project Saxum Real Estate was doing in Jacksonville, Florida, with a will-serve letter in hand from the utility company. But one day he received a call from the general contractor (GC). “He said, ‘You know, I think we have an issue. … We’re not going to have the transformer for two years.’” The utility wouldn’t allow the team to source one from elsewhere, even when Saxum offered to pay for testing that met the utility’s standards. “We were basically stuck,” Desai said. “We had to have the GC demobilize for about seven to eight months and had to remobilize after that, and we finally finished the project.” Construction material shortages have eased, he noted, but power equipment lead times have held steady or gotten worse. Saxum now tells brokers not to bring sites without a solid, written power plan.

2. Flexibility buys speed. Panelist Dave Mullaney, chief transformation officer at trucurrent, a developer, owner and operator of behind-the-meter energy resources, pushed back on the doom-and-gloom narrative surrounding power. He pointed out that the grid is short on capacity at its worst hours, not on average. “We’re starting to see a lot of utilities, particularly on the coasts, like in California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, come out with this idea of flexible interconnection,” he said. A site that can’t curtail its usage might only get 1 MW, while those that agree to stay off the grid during peak stress might get 3 to 4 MW. “And that can make a huge difference in what types of uses can exist at a site,” Mullaney said.