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Jigar Shah Profile picture
Jigar Shah
@JigarShahDC
husband, dad, serial entrepreneur, podcaster, democratizing the electrostate by deploying at scale. It's simple, not easy.
May 21 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The US electric grid hasn’t grown meaningfully in 20 years. Now data centers want to add the equivalent of three Californias to Texas alone by 2030. You can’t just plug that into existing utility ratemaking math. A new paradigm is needed. 🧵 @TKavulla describes the core problem: utility pricing recovers average embedded costs. But every new data center megawatt today costs more than average to serve — materials up 152% since 2019, capital costs rising fast. Under current rules, legacy ratepayers automatically subsidize new data center load. That’s the trap.
May 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
76 countries are now in “emergency measures” for the oil crisis, up from 55 just six weeks ago. That’s not a statistic. That’s the fastest spreading energy emergency in history. And the number is still climbing. 🧵 What does “emergency measures” actually mean? It’s a huge range. Lithuania is cutting train fares. Australia made public transport free. Myanmar and South Korea are telling people they can only drive on certain days. That’s the mild end.
May 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Bain & Standard Chartered’s 2026 SE Asia Green Economy Report: data centres, EVs & green industrial parks will drive 100+ TWh of new power demand in 3-4 years, requiring $200B+ in investment. $540B in announced green spending is on a credible path to deployment. 🧵 @JavierBlas on Odd Lots today: everyone expected oil at $200+ with 60+ days of Hormuz closed. We’re not there because bypass pipelines, SPR drawdowns, and inventory burns have cushioned the shock. But the biggest surprise? ~5% demand destruction that nobody saw coming.
May 17 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
America cannot lead the AI race without building the power and computing infrastructure AI requires. On that I agree completely. But the piece gets the diagnosis wrong — and a wrong diagnosis produces the wrong cure. 🧵 The Gallup poll it cites shows a majority of Americans oppose data centers near their home, including 63% of Republicans. The real enemies of AI are electric utilities that use data centers to jack up rates and GW+ developers that fail to engage communities.
May 11 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
.@EpochAIResearch has quietly assembled the most rigorous data set on AI infrastructure in existence. Here's what it tells us about how much compute we need by 2030, how many giant campuses are actually required, and where the real distributed inference opportunity lies. 🧵 The baseline: AI compute stock is growing at 3.4× per year, doubling every 7 months. Training compute for frontier models grows at 5× per year. US AI data center capacity will exceed 50 GW by 2030 — approaching 5% of total US generation capacity.
This is not scary for the grid.
May 10 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Everyone's asking: what actually powers AI data centers?

The answer is more complicated — and more interesting — than "natural gas vs renewables."

A 🧵 on what's really happening, and where it's going. Start with the obvious: data centers need firm power, not really 24/7 as they run at 50% capcity factors.
Solar/Wind are fuel, batteries are really providing the capacity.

So the assumption is gas & nuclear carry the load.

Big Tech energy portfolios tell a more nuanced story.
May 9 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I hear this framing all of the time and it is disappointing to hear it from @OurWorldInData.

Basically says that we use alot of land to grow biofuels. Put solar panels on that same land and you could power every car and truck on Earth.

It just doesn't work that way. 🧵 i get that Biofuel crops currently occupy ~32 million hectares globally. That generates about 1,400 TWh/yr of fuel energy.

Solar panels on the same land? ~32,000 TWh/yr.

But this is productive land and most landowners want to grow things. Most of the land is not near a substation.
May 8 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
PJM just cried "Uncle". They admit that capacity prices are up 1,000%+ in two auctions and that money goes to existing generators, doesn't send a signal to build new on 3 year contracts.

The prescription is pretty bold.

They aren't doing a market patch, this is a rethink 🧵 Grid 1.0 was built on one assumption: demand is passive. Show up whenever. Take whatever you need. The grid serves you.

That worked for factories and homes. It doesn't work when a hyperscaler drops 500 MW peak on a node.
May 6 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Geothermal energy could power civilization forever — 24/7, zero carbon, tiny footprint, works anywhere.

It’s growing fast. But not fast enough.

Here’s what the industry could learn to 10x its speed 🧵 Own the drill rig.

Tesla partnered to make its own batteries. SpaceX makes its own engines.

Geothermal companies almost entirely outsource drilling to oil & gas contractors who don’t prioritize their work.

Control your supply chain or someone else controls your timeline.
Apr 19 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Everyone's talking about the AI data center buildout like it's just a money problem. It's not. There are 5 distinct hard constraints stacked on top of each other — and solving one just reveals the next.

Why there is no way the US can unlock 100GW of AI compute by 2030. First, the scale of the gap.

The US has ~50 GW of data center capacity online today. Bain and McKinsey both put demand at ~100 GW by 2030.

That means adding ~10 GW per year for 5 years straight. The record year so far? About 2.5 GW actually delivered. We need 4x that. Every year.

Apr 6 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Just read a wild JPMorgan note on the current energy + war situation. Here are the spiciest takes 🧵

“US energy independence” is basically a myth.

Even as a net exporter, the US is still getting hit by global price shocks—sometimes worse than Europe. Strait of Hormuz = ultimate leverage.
Iran may have figured out it can “hold the global economy hostage” cheaply. Potential toll revenues: $70–90B/year.

assets.jpmprivatebank.com/content/dam/jp…
Mar 24 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This claim about fossil fuels sounds compelling—but it’s misleading. Let’s break it down 🧵

Yes, fossil fuels were ~77% of global energy in 1995 and ~76% today.

But that stat hides what actually changed.

Hydro hasn’t really moved since 1995 and wind/solar came from nowhere. The key issue: global energy demand has exploded.

So even if fossil fuels stayed a similar percentage, the total energy pie got MUCH bigger.

That means renewables didn’t “fail”—they grew massively, just alongside rising demand.
Mar 17 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Residential solar is one of the fastest-growing asset classes in America. But the dirty secret? O&M is broken. Expensive crews. Fragmented vendors. Zero data. Here's how we're fixing it. 🧵 Most solar O&M today looks like this:
→ A routine inspection ticket gets created
→ A Level 3 specialist drives 90 minutes to clean panels
→ You pay premium labor rates for commodity work
→ The homeowner hears nothing

This is the status quo. It's insane.
Mar 8 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
If you want to cut oil demand fast, you have to think about oil burned in machines, not for power plants.
Governments wanting the fastest path to reduce oil demand are focused on electrifying those machines with clean energy. Passenger vehicles. Gasoline cars are the single biggest oil products consumer on earth. Electric vehicles are already cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline cars. EVs are already manufactured at scale.
Feb 23 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
We have been talking about peak electricity demand for several years. There is a smart way to solve it and a "vibes" way to solve it.

We won't have a lack of annual energy, we have a lack of peak electricity capacity around 300 hours per year.

Electricity rates went up 5% last year. Rates are expecting to skyrocket even faster this year with Utilities choosing the most expensive solutions they can possible find. Everyone wants to answer to be natural gas plants. The vibes are so strong that @CaterpillarInc stock has double on the back of 20-30MW natural gas units.

Electricity trading regions like the PJM have raised electricity so quickly that electricity prices became a political issue.

Existing combustion engines that are already paid for are fast and reliable.

But new ones are simply no longer cheap.
Feb 22 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
If something like this happens one response is to implement "infrastructure solutions" paid for by the AI data center companies. Something like the Apollo Alliance If you just focus on energy efficiency measures that feature a 5 year payback or less would be $200B of investment per year. Mostly in HVAC/insulation.
mordorintelligence.com/industry-repor…
Feb 22 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The grid debate isn’t “clean energy vs gas.” No one cares.

It’s about achieving system cost and reliability without 9% rate increases every year and hopefully avoiding natural gas price volatility.

Let’s break down the arguments. 🧵 First principle: There is no such thing as "backup" on the grid. The "grid" is a diversity of resources that are expertly managed by professionals without political bias.

Thermal plants go offline for maintenance (often spring/fall). Nuclear refueling lasts weeks to months. Unexpected boiler issues happen.

AI tools are used to predict wind and solar output.
Feb 21 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Just read several embargoed reports coming out this week.

We are no longer in a “data center growth” cycle.

We are in a power procurement arms race. Hyperscalers are trying "off-grid" but it isn't really working so they are going "hybrid"

-Co-locating with generation
-Pursuing direct interconnection
-Backstopping with on-site gas
-Signing massive renewable + storage portfolios for capacity
Feb 18 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The dumbest thing is that the data center companies are combining the need for training and inference and assuming that all it needs to be in 1,000MW increments. They don't. Here are some estimates... For US frontier AI training specifically, demands could reach 20-25 GW total by 2028 across multiple companies, with single-model clusters needing 2-5 GW.
@AnthropicAI
anthropic.com/news/build-ai-…
Feb 13 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
The real question isn’t, “How do we build more power plants?”

It’s “How do we add power system capacity — fast?”

That’s a fundamentally different problem. And it leads to a different answer: load flexibility — especially distributed batteries — aggregated into reliable, enforceable resources that can speed interconnection, shave peaks, and strengthen the grid for everyone. This is from the great @timothyhade.

He then points out the physical lead times for large power transformers, distribution transformers, and of course new CCGT turbines.
Jan 26 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
The U.S. grid isn’t “full.”

It’s underutilized.

Less than half of existing grid capacity is used on average—yet we keep planning like every new MW requires new steel in the ground.

That’s a trillion-dollar mistake. 🧵
@SpanbergerForVA
@GovSherrillNJ We have the ability to reduce electricity rates while demand is surging (data centers, EVs, manufacturing).

The default response:
➡️ Build more infrastructure
➡️ Raise rates

There’s a better option: use what we already have, better. While we build a smarter grid.