Data Centres: US turns to captive plants, India trusts grid model

The global race to power energy-intensive AI data centres is reviving the captive power model in the United States — but India is charting a fundamentally different course, anchoring its digital infrastructure growth to its 520-gigawatt unified national electricity grid, among the largest interconnected power systems in the world.

While US President Donald Trump has publicly urged technology companies to arrange power for their own AI data centres — signalling a move toward on-site generation and dedicated energy ecosystems — Indian officials maintain that the country’s integrated grid has both the scale and system flexibility to absorb the coming surge in commercial power demand.