MANDAR PANDIT
AI
MANDAR PANDIT
TITLE: CHIEF STRATEGY AND GROWTH OFFICER, DATA CENTRES, ELECTRIFICATION SYSTEMS
COMPANY: GE VERNOVA
INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES / ENERGY
LOCATION: COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK, US
Mandar supports the adoption of advanced grid technologies that address industry challenges and enable energy transition.
Global turbine orders reached 110 GW by the end of 2025, but global manufacturing capacity tops out at just 60 to 70 GW annually, according to Wood Mackenzie’ s report on Gas Turbine Prices Soar 195 % as Market Faces Supply-Demand Crisis. Because of this severe supply-and-demand mismatch, leading turbine manufacturers like GE Vernova are sold out for several years. Large-class gas turbine orders placed today face average delivery wait times stretching up to seven years.
At the same time, Rabobank’ s report The Sprint: Data Centers are Building a Parallel Energy System in the US points out grid interconnection queues in saturated data centre hotspots like Northern Virginia or California in the US now routinely take five to seven years.
While a data centre can be built in just 12 to 24 months, securing a grid connection now takes years. To bypass these constraints and bridge the gap to cleaner solutions, hyperscalers are shifting to on-site power, using natural gas, fuel cells or battery storage to keep projects on track. However, even this transitionary path is bottlenecked by severe equipment supply chain delays.
“ As of today, we have around a 100GW gas backlog,” explains Mandar Pandit, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer for Data Centres for Electrification Systems at GE Vernova.“ Looking at the market for gas turbines, the earliest we can have one shipped from today is 2031.” Mandar points out that the sudden AI surge caught the energy supply chain off guard, forcing developers to look for the fastest possible route to dispatchable power.
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