AI data centers turn to industrial boilers and steam turbines as gas turbine backlogs grow

Gas turbines, the traditional workhorses for new power generation, now carry multi-year backlogs. Data center operators are turning to industrial boilers paired with steam turbines as an alternative. Babcock & Wilcox, a 157-year-old company, has signed a $2.4 billion design-build agreement to deliver 1.2 GW of natural gas-fired boiler-steam capacity for Applied Digital’s AI campuses. B&W says it can deliver packaged boiler units in about one year, a fraction of the wait time for large-frame gas turbines. Why boilers are suddenly cool again AI-scale data centers are placing orders for hundreds of megawatts to gigawatt-scale gas turbines, and those orders now represent around 20% of some manufacturers’ entire gas power backlog. Natural gas-fired boilers coupled with steam turbines offer a workaround. B&W claims these packaged systems can match the peak-hour efficiency of some gas turbines. Siemens Energy agreed to supply 20 steam turbine-generator sets, each rated at 50 MW, totaling 1 GW of capacity as part of its arrangement with B&W. That agreement carries an August 2026 notice-to-proceed timeline. Applied Digital’s North Dakota bet Applied Digital’s site in Ellenda...