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The race to capitalize on the data center boom is underway.
Investors across the U.S. are pouring billions of dollars into building new data center facilities, spurring a surge in demand for the specialized contractors needed to build out their complex infrastructure.
But mission-critical infrastructure has always been a focus for RC Power, a San Jose, California-based industrial electrical contractor, well before data centers became the hottest asset class in commercial real estate.
“In the early 2000s, we really started to get a solid understanding of what the internet was going to be and where data centers were going to go as a result,” said Ron Godinez, founder and CEO of RC Power. “I’ve been in the electrical industry my entire career, and we recognized early on that data centers were going to see explosive growth, so we made that our focus. It’s put us in a great spot today, 20 years later.”
Godinez said the firm provides a full suite of design-build electrical solutions, ranging from data center infrastructure support and electrical design/engineering to construction and low voltage/data communications. Since its inception in 2006, the company has completed more than 300 projects across California.
But Godinez said he’s seen a lot of changes in data center electrical infrastructure and what clients expect from their contractors. And while RC Power has traditionally focused on smaller-scale projects of 10 to 20 megawatts, the rise of artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities as demand for more power and faster deployment grows.
According to a 2025 survey from the Uptime Institute, 52% of respondents said they’re upgrading their power distribution systems to keep up with AI advancements. Fifty-one percent reported making updates to their cooling systems to accommodate more heat from bigger server racks. Cooling conversions have been added to RC Power’s current workload, Godinez said.
With all of this change happening in the industry, it’s projected that data centers could make up between 9.5% and 15.3% of total U.S. energy consumption by 2030, up significantly from 4.4% in 2023.
But amid this period of rapid growth, one bottleneck has proven to be particularly pressing: power availability.
“What we need is better laws in place, more flexibility and open competition,” Godinez said. “One of the problems with the California market is we're very regulated. We want less regulation so there’s more competition. In most places, you only have one electric provider. There’s not a lot of options out there.”
Godinez said the supply chain is another big bottleneck for the industry. Electrical equipment, such as transformers, can take upward of 160 weeks to arrive on-site. High-voltage circuit breakers have reached an average wait of 125 weeks. Grid interconnections can also take years.
“Right now, being flexible in your solution is so important,” he said. “Can you bring your client another solution that can still meet their metric and think outside of the box? That’s the question we need to be thinking about today.”
At RC Power, Godinez said his team does just that.
RC’s approach to getting data center projects up and running faster is multidimensional. If a client cannot get power to their property as quickly as they’d like, the firm can install temporary equipment first and more permanent equipment later. This phased strategy allows for rapid deployment, getting these facilities online in as little as three to four months.
Godinez said his firm also partners closely with small manufacturers in states like Texas and Illinois to produce custom transformers and electrical solutions on compressed timelines. But one of the most crucial parts of RC’s approach is leveraging its longstanding relationships with city officials and utility companies.
Working closely with these parties can make it easier to find alternative solutions when conventional construction schedules may not align with a client’s expectations, Godinez said.
“We have a direct line of communication to utility company project managers, city inspectors and electric department heads,” he said. “Staying in touch with them and putting a plan of action together to get these projects over the finish line is so important.”
RC was recently working on a project where the client wanted to get five server racks up and running before construction was finished, but permitting wouldn’t allow this to happen.
“We met with the head city inspector, and he goes, ‘OK, I'll break this project up into five phases, and you can start using each one. It's just going to cost you more in permit fees and design,’” Godinez said. “We brought this information back to our client, and they were thrilled. If you don't have those relationships, you don't really know how to tackle situations like this.”
Looking forward, as artificial intelligence continues to reshape the data center landscape, efficiency and speed-to-market will remain top priorities for developers, Godinez said. But meeting these demands isn’t necessarily about building bigger or faster — it’s about understanding what customers need, then allowing room for growth.
“We get requests sometimes for 500-kilowatt racks, but this is not something even liquid cooling can cool,” he said. “It’s all about defining what clients really need and engineering that for efficiency. A lot of these guys are trying to build for two to three years down the road, investing millions to do so, but the reality is we’re not there yet.”
This article was produced in collaboration between RC Power and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.
Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.
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