Retired after more than 17 years leading Google’s Global Data Center organization, I now get to apply my experience at a time of unprecedented change across the entire ecosystem. One of the things I continue to love about leading a team is distilling and articulating the most crucial, top-of-mind priorities to align efforts and engage resources.
In the same spirit, I’m writing about what’s top of everyone’s mind today—power, and having access to energy sources, solving grid congestion, managing demand needs with long interconnection queues, and the emerging imperative of self-generation.
Power Play: Why Self-Generation is Now a Necessity for AI’s Data Center Appetite
The race for artificial intelligence (AI) dominance is fundamentally an infrastructure race, and the scarcest resource is no longer compute chips—it’s power. The massive, sustained, and concentrated electrical demand of hyperscale AI data centers is colliding head-on with an aging, constrained US electrical grid.
For the world’s largest AI companies—Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Oracle/OpenAI—relying on the traditional utility model is no longer a viable option. Self-generation, or Behind-the-Meter (BTM) power, has moved from a “nice-to-have” option for redundancy to an existential necessity for survival and growth.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Kava is a seasoned engineering and operations executive who most recently served as Vice President of Data Centers at Google for 17 years. Under his leadership, the data center team consistently designed and built infrastructure that not only met current technical requirements but also anticipated future technical trends—all while using the least amount of energy possible. The result: Google’s data centers continue to surpass industry averages for sustainability while driving record-setting business results.
Previously, Kava was an engineering and business operations executive in the semiconductor industry, including serving on the leadership team at Applied Materials for over a decade. This experience would later bolster his ability to understand the entire data center ecosystem, and the digital infrastructure stack—from the chip to the chiller.
Kava has earned numerous awards, including being named an Industry Titan by Interglobix Magazine and one of the 100 most influential industry leaders by Infrastructure Masons. He was the first person not employed by Intel to receive the Craig Barrett award for engineering innovation, and he won the “selfless service” award from Salute, a veteran-owned organization that helps veterans transition into the data center industry.
