IEA Projects AI Data Center Power Demand to More Than Double by 2030

B.Grimm Power, or BGRIM, has announced a plan to serve massive electricity demand from future industries including data centres, artificial intelligence, electronics and the EV ecosystem. Noppadol Karansut, Chief Executive Officer for business in Thailand, Malaysia and industrial business solutions, told Thunhoon that the draft national power development plan, or PDP, estimates data centre electricity demand at 8,800 megawatts over the next 25 years, higher than Malaysia and Singapore, which each have roughly 2,000 to 4,000 megawatts of installed capacity and projects under development. Combined with its existing industrial customer base of 2,300 megawatts, the company sees an opportunity to develop 10,000 to 30,000 megawatts of power from gas and clean energy. The government is also allowing direct power sales to the private sector, or Direct PPA, and the company has secured high-voltage substation and transmission line sites covering 11 industrial estates to support the government's 2,000 megawatt Direct PPA pilot project. On the data centre business, the company has formed a joint venture with a Singaporean firm to develop a 96 megawatt Hyperscaler AI Data Center worth 26 billion baht in Chonburi province. Phase 1, at 48 megawatts, is scheduled for commercial operation, or COD, this November, while Phase 2, also 48 megawatts, is set for COD the following year. The company aims to reach 300 megawatts of total data centre capacity by 2030. As for rising gas prices, the company has completed negotiations with industrial customers on a new Gas Linking electricity pricing structure covering 400 megawatts out of a total of 800 megawatts, with another 400 megawatts still under negotiation. At the same time, the company is structuring its finances to keep its Net IBD/E ratio below 2.0 times, with a target of reducing it to 1.3 to 1.5 times.

Bloom Energy Corporation unveiled a new 800V DC-native fuel-cell power architecture on September 16, designed to supply continuous direct current to the next generation of AI data centers. The solid-oxide fuel cells generate continuous 800V DC power natively rather than producing AC power that must then be converted to DC, potentially removing conversion stages such as transformers and switchgear and lowering both capital cost and energy losses. Bloom claims the technology can cut non-compute capital expenditures for a 1 GW data center by $3.6 billion, or 27%, and lower five-year total cost of ownership by $5.5 billion, or 9%, compared with traditional AC-based infrastructure, though those figures come from the company's own model and depend on site design, energy prices, equipment costs and customer deployment decisions. Bloom pointed to Nvidia's planned adoption of 800V DC architecture beginning with Rubin Ultra and Kyber systems, and said its 2026 Mid-Year Data Center Power Report found data center leaders expect DC-based architectures to account for 58% of new deployments by 2030. The launch comes as Bloom reported its strongest quarter ever in Q2 2026, with revenue up more than 165% year over year and crossing the $1 billion milestone, and raised full-year revenue guidance to $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion, implying 100% growth at the midpoint, along with adjusted EPS guidance of $2.55 to $2.85. The stock has jumped almost 170% since the beginning of 2026, leaving limited room for weaker-than-expected execution, and the company still needs to demonstrate that data-center operators will deploy the technology at scale.