Data Centres Are Buying Up Used Turbines and Old Jet Engines to Feed the AI Power Rush

Utilities, developers and firms racing to power AI data centres are scouring the world for second-hand gas turbines, reviving mothballed machines and converting retired jet engines, as lead times for costly new equipment stretch into the next decade. Demand for energy-hungry data centres is soaring, creating a critical bottleneck for essential power infrastructure and equipment such as turbines — and with new orders far outstripping what factories can build, the second-hand market has become the fastest way to keep the AI boom powered.

A bottleneck measured in years, not months

"Delivery conversations (are) firmly focused on the 2030 to 2031 window," Aurora Tenorio, senior analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said about the US turbine market. That is prompting some companies to search for second-hand and refurbished equipment as well as turbines based on jet engines rather than wait for order backlogs to clear, according to more than a dozen brokers, service firms and suppliers. In the United States, delivery of a gas turbine now takes six years on average, Tenorio said. Worldwide orders top 100 gigawatts (GW), according to Wood Mackenzie, well above the estimated global production capacity of between 60 GW and 70 GW. Analysts at investment bank Jefferies estimate that US data centres alone account for nearly 17 GW of demand this year and that figure can more than triple by 2028.

The second-hand market is "very, very hot"

"That secondary market is very, very hot right now," said Ana Amicarella, CEO of EthosEnergy, an equipment services provider. There are no reliable estimates of how much the secondary market is contributing to the global turbine supply, worth about $25 billion a year. Well-maintained used units can sell for about $1.5 million to $1.7 million per megawatt, and refurbished units for about $1.3 million, according to Zach Machuca, managing partner at Origin Partners, which buys power equipment for data centre developers.

Jet engines, repurposed for data centres

AI infrastructure firm Crusoe, for example, in April ordered 13 so-called aeroderivative gas turbines from US-based ProEnergy — which are based on jet engines made by GE Aerospace — describing it as a strategic move to scale fast. The turbines, with a joint capacity of 650 megawatts (MW), will be deployed at Crusoe's AI data centre projects in the US. ProEnergy and Crusoe did not respond to Reuters requests for additional information. Finland's Wartsila has booked around 3 GW of orders since spring last year from US data centres for power units running on gas engines instead of turbines, Anders Lindberg, president of the group's energy business, said.

Why power is the new AI battleground

The scramble for turbines shows how the AI race has moved beyond chips and models to the physical infrastructure underneath them. Every new data centre needs enormous amounts of electricity, and the equipment to generate it cannot be built fast enough. Until new factories and supply chains catch up, the companies building the AI future will keep buying up yesterday's turbines — and yesterday's jet engines — to power it.

Sources

• Reuters — AI power rush sends data centres hunting for used turbines and jet engines