The race to power AI data centers has turned electricity procurement into a construction problem as much as an energy one. With utility interconnection queues stretching years in many markets, developers are increasingly building power onsite—but how that power is built can matter as much as capacity or output.
A recent Motley Fool piece captured the distinction well, describing Bloom Energy’s solid-oxide fuel cells as “Lego blocks”: standardized units that are manufactured in a factory, shipped as complete modules, and stacked onsite to reach the capacity a customer needs. It’s a small word choice with a large operational implication. A Lego block either fits or it doesn’t; there’s no ambiguity introduced at assembly.
Compare that to a field-built combustion power plant, where turbines, switchgear, transformers, and miles of cabling are integrated on a live construction site, often by multiple contractors working sequentially rather than a single controlled process. In many ways, the fuel cells vs. turbines debate is a proxy for the deeper question of factory vs. field: it’s not just which technology generates power more efficiently, but which one arrives onsite closer to finished.
That contrast is at the center of Bloom Energy’s newly introduced Power Connect system. The deployment system is designed to cut onsite power installation time by more than 40% by moving a large share of the electrical integration work—pre-wiring, connection, and testing—out of the field and into the factory. Power Connect arrives already assembled and validated, rather than requiring that integration to happen for the first time on a job site.
Why Manufacturing Location Matters
The appeal of factory integration is predictability as well as speed. On a construction site, dozens of variables can introduce risk: weather delays, inconsistent labor quality across subcontractors, parts arriving out of sequence, or wiring errors that surface only once a system is energized. Every one of those variables is a potential point of failure that has to be caught, diagnosed, and fixed after the fact, often after the equipment is already live and expected to be carrying critical load.
A factory environment removes most of that variability. The same team, following the same process, builds and tests each unit before it leaves the plant. Problems are caught on a bench or test floor rather than in front of a customer’s server racks. And because the design is standardized rather than custom-engineered for each site, the tenth installation looks like the first one. That consistency allows the manufacturer to promise a repeatable timeline and a repeatable outcome, rather than a range that depends on how a given project’s construction phase goes.
This is also why the current shortage of skilled electrical trades matters more for field-assembled projects than for factory-built ones. When most of the complex electrical work happens in a controlled facility, the onsite labor need shrinks. Electricians can be deployed where their expertise adds the most value, in final connections and commissioning, rather than being consumed by first-time, one-off integration work.
The Stakes for AI Infrastructure
Data center operators have described power access as the leading factor in where they choose to build. This criterion ranked in the top three site-selection considerations by 84% of respondents in a survey published in Bloom’s mid-year update to its 2025 Data Center Power Report. Access issues have pushed many hyperscalers toward “bring your own power” strategies. They’re building gas turbines, and in some cases entire power plants, onsite to bypass grid queues that can run into years.
However, that rush to bypass the grid has its own risks. Sourcing enough turbines fast enough has strained an already tight supply chain, and permitting for onsite combustion generation varies widely by jurisdiction. When operators weigh fuel cells vs. turbines for a given site, supply chain exposure is often the deciding factor. Turbine lead times are running long industry-wide, while modular fuel cell units can be manufactured on a more predictable cadence.
Stitching together generation, switching, and distribution equipment from multiple vendors on a compressed timeline raises the odds that something in that field-built system doesn’t perform as designed on day one. When infrastructure has to run at near-continuous uptime, solving problems in a controlled factory is far less risky than solving them on a construction site under deadline pressure.
None of this means factory-built systems are risk-free or that every field-assembled project runs into trouble. But as onsite power shifts from a backup solution to a primary one for an industry that measures acceptable downtime in minutes per year, the manufacturing approach behind that power—not just its stated capacity—is becoming a real differentiator.
Manufacturing approach won’t guarantee reliability on its own, but it goes a long way toward determining how much risk is built into a system before it ever reaches the site.
