AI Summary
5 min readIn 2024, Bloom Energy surveyed its customers about how their energy strategies were shifting. At that point, about 13 percent of respondents said on-site power generation would be needed by 2030. By April of this year, that number had jumped to 35 percent. And when asked about 2035, half said they were already planning their own energy needs based on on-site power. The grid is hitting its limits, and a scramble for electricity is reshaping how some of America’s largest energy users get their power.
Why on-site power is going permanent, not just bridging
Amon Joshi, Bloom’s Chief Commercial Officer, spent over two decades at GE focused on aeroderivative gas turbines for peaker plants. He saw the supply crunch coming years before it became an industry crisis. Turbine orders backed up, and the supply chain for Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 components all drew from the same sources. Scaling up would take years longer than power demand growth.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:27) **The Supply Crunch Amon Saw Coming** - Amon discusses how his background in aeroderivative gas turbines gave him early visibility into the coming power supply constraints.
- 2 (01:35) **Surge in Interest for On-Site Power** - Bloom Energy's surveys show a dramatic increase in customers planning for on-site power generation.
- 3 (02:49) **Community Pushback Creates a New Advantage for Fuel Cells** - As data center developers face community opposition, pollution, water use, and noise become critical factors in power decisions.
- 4 (04:40) **Why Customers See On-Site Power as Permanent, Not a Bridge** - Amon explains that customers are increasingly viewing on-site generation as a long-term solution rather than a temporary fix until grid connections arrive.
- 5 (06:41) **The Hidden Costs of Grid Power vs. On-Site Generation** - Amon breaks down why on-site power can be cheaper than grid electricity when all delivery costs are factored in.
- 6 (10:30) **Responding to Skeptics: Simplicity of Solid-State Power** - Amon counters the argument that on-site power is too complicated and costly for most customers.
- 7 (12:45) **Community Attributes Become Front and Center** - Environmental and local impact factors are now critical in power decisions, driven by community pushback.
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Show Notes
This is a partner episode, brought to you by Bloom Energy.
Long interconnection queues, fragile supply chains, and a lack of grid capacity are pushing a wide range of C&I customers to invest in distributed, on-site power.
But as data centers and other industrial facilities build more power behind the meter, new challenges have emerged. Air quality, noise, and water use are top concerns for local communities, making cleaner solutions like fuel cells much more attractive.
This shift within the data center industry is starting to shape energy decisions in the broader C&I sector across retail, healthcare, higher education, and manufacturing.
In this Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey talks with Aman Joshi, chief commercial officer at Bloom Energy, about how the scramble for electricity is changing how large energy users plan their power.
In this new landscape for large loads, Aman explains why more customers are planning to permanently stay disconnected from the grid; how the familiar cost-per-megawatt-hour calculation can fall short; and why speed, reliability, and community acceptance are central to power decisions.
This conversation was recorded live as part of Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum with Bloom Energy. You can access the full video here.
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