Gas Turbine Backlogs Stretch Past Four Years of Output as 60Hz Demand Approaches 56 GW Annually
Record order books at Siemens, Mitsubishi, and GE Vernova are pushing new gas capacity timelines to 2031 and beyond, with prices set to follow.
Annual gas turbine demand from traditional 60-hertz markets — the United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Canada, Taiwan, and parts of Japan — could average as much as 56 GW per year, Asian Power reported on September 15 (2026-09-15), citing industry data. That would represent a significant step up from current delivery rates. Taiwan and Saudi Arabia have driven much of the pressure: their combined share of global heavy-duty turbine orders nearly tripled from 13% in the previous five years, reducing available supply for other buyers across the same constrained chain.8
Global orders reached 38 GW in the second quarter of 2026, up 29% from the first quarter and 71% higher than a year earlier, JP Morgan told Bloomberg. Manufacturers cannot come close to matching that pace.2,4
Siemens Energy's backlog climbed to 69 GW as of its fiscal third-quarter earnings call during the week of August 3 (2026-08-03), after booking 15 GW in that quarter alone. Gas services sales rose 62% year-on-year to €10 billion ($11.6 billion), Chief Financial Officer Maria Ferraro said. Siemens shipped 6 GW in the same period. Even after bringing approximately 30 additional medium-sized manufacturing units online since 2025, Chief Executive Christian Bruch said the company could deliver 15 to 16 GW per year. At current backlog levels, that implies more than four years of committed production.1
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries reported a large-frame backlog of 35 GW. The company sold 35 turbines totaling 16 GW in its 2025 fiscal year, per its financial release. Senior Vice President and CFO Hiroshi Nishio said demand had met or exceeded expectations just three months into Mitsubishi's 2026 financial plan.3
GE Vernova builds roughly 20 GW annually across all customers worldwide, oilprice.com reported. Only about a fifth of its contracted gigawatts are earmarked for data centers. The remainder goes to utilities replacing coal, Middle East power and desalination, industrial customers, and grid reliability projects. Data centers are driving the headlines, but they account for a minority of the actual order flow.6
Securing supply by acquisition has become one response. Bloomberg reported around August 14 (2026-08-14) that Elon Musk had bought a gas turbine maker for a reported $1 billion to power a data center. The deal illustrated how difficult open-market procurement has become for buyers without long-standing manufacturer relationships.4
Wood Mackenzie forecasts turbine prices will reach $600 per kilowatt by end-2027, a 195% increase from 2019 levels. Developers entering the market now face a significantly higher cost basis than those who contracted earlier.2,6
The delivery bottleneck shows up most visibly in Southeast Asia, where Wood Mackenzie expects the region to bring online less than one-third of its planned gas-fired capacity by 2030.7 Singapore's Energy Market Authority awarded Tuas Power a license in August (2026-08-21) to build a 670-megawatt combined-cycle unit; commercial operations are not expected until December 2031.5
But gas turbines are not the only long lead-time component. Siemens Energy's Grid Technologies division, making transformers and gas-insulated switchgear, carried a €51 billion ($59 billion) order backlog as of June 30, Ferraro said, with plans to expand that manufacturing capacity by roughly 50% by 2030. For developers moving forward with new gas plants, the bottleneck may simply shift from the turbine hall to the substation once the turbine order is placed.1