Venture Global’s 11.5 GW gas deal prices onsite power near US$1,500 per kW. GE Vernova reports on 28 October

A US liquefied natural gas exporter has just put a price ceiling on bring-your-own-power for AI. Venture Global’s frame agreements cover up to 11.52 GW of gas-fired combined-cycle capacity, more than all the live US data center capacity with a known size in our tracker, and could cost about US$17.2 billion if every unit is ordered.

The timing matters because the grid route is getting slower and dearer at the same time. Turbine factories are booked for years, new combined-cycle plants cost about three times what they did in the early 2020s, and the next read on prices and lead times comes from the equipment makers themselves, with Baker Hughes reporting on 27 October and GE Vernova and Vertiv on 28 October.

What Venture Global signed

Venture Global LNG, a subsidiary of Venture Global, Inc., signed two frame agreements on 9 October, according to its Form 8-K filed on 15 October. A power frame agreement with GE Vernova Operations and Baker Hughes Energy Services covers up to 16 power islands, with deliveries running through 2034 at the latest. A grid frame agreement with GE Grid Solutions covers long-lead electrical equipment for up to 21 power island projects.

Each island is rated at 720 MW and would consist of combined-cycle gas turbines and related equipment, in configurations that match Venture Global’s existing plants, the company said in its announcement. Today the company runs or is building six power islands, about 4.5 GW of “Island Mode” gas generation, behind the meter at its Louisiana LNG plants.

Most of the 16 islands are options, not orders. Venture Global expects to place the first power island purchase order by the end of 2026. It has reserved manufacturing slots with GE Vernova for eight of the other 15 islands, with purchase orders for those expected to start in early 2027. Reservation rights for the power islands lapse in stages between October 2027 and October 2029 if no further agreements are signed. Apart from reservation fees, neither side is bound until purchase orders are signed.

Sources: Venture Global Form 8-K, 15 Oct 2026; Venture Global announcement, 15 Oct 2026. The 11.52 GW total is 16 × 720 MW (our calculation). Unit prices were not disclosed.

Chief executive Mike Sabel framed the plan as a utility business, not a side project.

The company says it will offer island-mode power, gas supply, closed-loop water systems and land at sites it owns or controls. It said it would file its first permit applications in the week of the announcement, and that any data center business would be kept separate from its LNG sales contracts.

The economics: what US$17.2 billion buys

The filing does not give a unit price, but the ceiling lets us estimate one. US$17.2 billion over 11.52 GW is about US$1,490 per kW, or US$1.49 million per MW of island capacity (our calculation). Spread over the 10 GW of compute Venture Global says it could support, it is about US$1.72 million per MW of data center capacity.

That is an upper bound for equipment, not the cost of a finished plant. It includes reservation fees and grid equipment for up to 21 projects, so the true power island price per kW is lower. It also leaves out construction labour, foundations, gas connections, land and financing.

The installed cost of new US combined-cycle plants gives the other end of the range. In an April 2026 report, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said the newest proposals cost at least US$2,500 per kW, roughly triple the projects built in the early 2020s. It cited Lazard, whose upper bound for combined-cycle capital cost was US$1,300 to US$1,600 per kW from 2015 to 2025, with the lower bound at or below US$1,000 per kW through 2024. Dominion Energy and Santee Cooper put their proposed 2,180 MW Canadys plant in South Carolina at US$5 billion, or US$2,293 per kW, before pipeline costs, IEEFA reported.

Sources: EIA, Cost and Performance Characteristics of New Generating Technologies, AEO2023, Table 1; IEEFA, April 2026; Venture Global 8-K. These figures use different scopes and dollar years and should not be added together. Wood Mackenzie puts gas turbines at 20-30% of combined-cycle project cost; the Venture Global ceiling is far higher than that share because it also covers steam turbines, electrical equipment, grid packages and services.

Using the two installed benchmarks, all 16 islands would cost about US$26.4 billion to US$28.8 billion to build (11.52 GW × US$2,293-2,500 per kW, our calculation). Venture Global plans 11.52 GW of generation for 10 GW of compute, or 1.15 MW of generation per MW of data center capacity. At those installed costs, that is US$2.6 million to US$2.9 million of power plant for each MW of compute (our calculation).

Why turbine prices keep rising

Gas turbines are the bottleneck. Wood Mackenzie said in April that turbine prices are expected to reach US$600 per kW by the end of 2027, a 195% increase since 2019. Global orders stood at 110 GW at the end of 2025 against manufacturing capacity of 60 to 70 GW, it said, with order books sold through 2027.

GE Vernova’s own numbers show how full the books are. In its second-quarter results on 22 July, the company said gas equipment backlog plus slot reservation agreements rose from 100 GW to 116 GW, and that it expects at least 125 GW under contract by the end of 2026. It said gas orders grew on both volume and price, and that data center orders passed US$5 billion in the first half, more than double its 2025 total, according to its results release.

Output is rising, but slowly. GE Vernova said it was on track to reach 20 GW of annual gas turbine output in the third quarter of 2026, 24 GW in 2028 and 30 GW in 2030. The eight islands reserved by Venture Global, 5.76 GW, equal 29% of one year of that 20 GW output; all 16 would equal 58% (our calculation). Baker Hughes shares the power island scope, so not all of it falls on one factory.

What onsite power costs to run

Capital is only half the bill. The other half is the price of the electricity the plant produces. Using a capital cost of US$2,400 to US$2,600 per kW, Lazard estimated power from new combined-cycle plants at US$107 per MWh, IEEFA reported. In its October Short-Term Energy Outlook, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast wholesale power prices averaging US$52 per MWh across 11 hubs in 2026 and US$49 per MWh in 2027.

The gap is US$55 per MWh. For a data center drawing 1 MW around the clock, 8,760 MWh a year, that is about US$482,000 a year more than wholesale grid power (our calculation). The comparison flatters the grid: wholesale hub prices leave out transmission and delivery charges, which a grid-connected data center also pays, and the onsite plant avoids. A grid connection also cannot be bought today in many US markets at any price, which is the gap Venture Global wants to fill.

In our view, the buyers of island power are paying for speed and certainty, not cheap electricity. A data center that waits three or four extra years for a grid connection loses far more revenue than the extra US$482,000 per MW a year.

The wider pattern: everyone is ordering their own power

Venture Global’s frame is the largest of several US onsite power orders in the past four weeks.

Sources: Venture Global 8-K; Turbomachinery International, 9 Oct 2026; Wärtsilä, 5 Oct 2026. No contract values were disclosed for the Dynamis and Wärtsilä orders.

The smaller orders show the same trade-off at different sizes. Engines and small turbines arrive sooner and can be added in steps; large combined-cycle islands are more efficient but arrive later. Wärtsilä’s customer will not run its plant until 2029.

How big this is against the market

Our own data puts the deal in proportion. The DC Market Insights tracker lists 1,243 US data center facilities, with 10,446.8 MW live, 18,199.4 MW under construction and 40,240.5 MW planned among the 444 sites that publish a size (DC Market Insights data, 22 October 2026). Venture Global’s 11.52 GW of islands would equal 110% of that live capacity and 63% of the capacity under construction (our calculation).

In money terms, the US$17.2 billion ceiling equals 92% of the DC Market Insights estimate of the 2026 global data center onsite power generation market, US$18.67 billion. Assuming it is spread evenly over the eight years from 2027 to 2034, it is about US$2.15 billion a year, or 11.5% of that 2026 market (our calculation). Our separate estimate for the data center gas turbine market is US$5.84 billion in 2026, up 132.6% from US$2.51 billion in 2025.

For market sizing, see our Data Center Onsite Power Generation Market, Data Center Gas Turbine Market and Data Center Microgrid Market reports. For US capacity by status and operator, see the DC Market Insights data center database; for the large-load rules that push developers toward onsite power, see the Power and Policy tracker; and for grid tariffs, see data center electricity rates.

What to watch next

• 27 October 2026 (5 p.m. ET): Baker Hughes third-quarter results; webcast on 28 October at 9:30 a.m. ET.
• 28 October 2026 (before market open): GE Vernova third-quarter results, webcast at 7:30 a.m. ET; watch gas backlog, slot reservations and pricing.
• 28 October 2026 (before market open): Vertiv third-quarter results, call at 11 a.m. ET; a read on power and cooling equipment orders for the same campuses.
• Q3 2026 Form 10-Q: Venture Global said full copies of both frame agreements will be filed as exhibits with its quarterly report for the period ended 30 September 2026.
• 10 November 2026: EIA’s next Short-Term Energy Outlook, with updated wholesale power price forecasts.
• By 31 December 2026: Venture Global’s first power island purchase order; grid equipment reservation rights end in mid-December 2026.
• Early 2027: purchase orders for the eight islands reserved with GE Vernova are expected to begin.

Frequently asked questions

How much is Venture Global’s power island deal worth?

About US$17.2 billion if Venture Global places every purchase order under both frame agreements, including reservation fees, according to its 15 October Form 8-K. Only reservation fees and reserved capacity are binding today. The figure is subject to adjustment.

How much does a gas power plant for a data center cost per kW?

New US combined-cycle plants cost about US$2,293 to US$2,500 per kW installed, according to IEEFA citing Dominion Energy and Santee Cooper and Lazard. Venture Global’s equipment ceiling works out at about US$1,490 per kW (our calculation), before construction and gas connections.

How long are gas turbine lead times in 2026?

Up to six years, Wood Mackenzie said, with order books sold through 2027 and prices expected to reach US$600 per kW by the end of 2027. Venture Global’s power island deliveries run through 2034.

Is onsite gas power cheaper than the grid?

No. Lazard estimated power from new combined-cycle plants at US$107 per MWh, against EIA’s 2026 wholesale forecast of US$52 per MWh. That gap is about US$482,000 per MW a year (our calculation), but onsite power can arrive years before a grid connection.