Special topic: The 2026 Global Views Summit will be held from October 20-22 by the Huangpu River in Shanghai, and the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference is once again arriving. Nobel Prize and Turing Award winners will speak on-site about the future and trends of technology, and there will even be a live dialogue between网红 professors Michael Sandel and Xiang Biao, who "rescue" people from anxiety and involution.
Limited spots are available, so act fast. Let us join together for the appointment with sustainability! [Click to register] Delta Electronics Chairman and CEO Cheng Ping. Photo by Zhang Zhijie. Article by Lu Jiarou of Global Views.
The 2026 Global Views Summit was held in Taipei from October 14-15. Delta Electronics Chairman and CEO Cheng Ping delivered a keynote speech titled "The Smarter, the More Sustainable: Moving Toward the Electrification Era." He pointed out that the capital expenditure of the four major U.S. cloud service providers (CSPs) is estimated to reach 4.7 times the 2022 level in 2026, while U.S. power companies are expected to increase to only 1.77 times over the same period. Faced with this gap between power supply and demand, independent microgrids that integrate power generation, energy storage, and power dispatch are becoming the solution for energy autonomy.
"We will face an increasing shortage of electricity, but the goal of electrification must still move forward." Cheng Ping noted that only through electrification can the use of green power be expanded, but the power system is affected by factors such as regulations, equipment service life, and return on investment, making the pace of investment and construction difficult to keep up with cloud operators. According to the presentation he showed at the summit, it is estimated that by 2028, the new power demand from U.S. data centers will reach 44 GW, while the grid's新增新增 power supply capacity will be only 25 GW, leaving a gap of 19 GW, equivalent to about 40% of new demand facing a supply shortfall.
"This is a very, very large amount of electricity consumption." Cheng Ping said other countries are facing the same problem, leading to situations such as restricting data center power use or requiring large data centers to have their own power supply capabilities. The cost of power facilities also makes energy management more important. In Cheng Ping's view, the growth in power demand also comes from the advancement of the entire electrification era. He pointed out that the current global average electrification level is about 21%. Even though Taiwan's information and communications and electronics industries are developed, its electrification level is only in the low 30% range. Transportation, industry, and other sectors still rely heavily on natural gas, coal, and other fuels.
"When we talk about energy transition and electrification, the most important thing is the so-called green energy and green power." He said that electricity demand related to electric vehicles, data centers, and building automation is rising rapidly, and power applications have become an urgent issue. When large AI data centers must consider self-provided power, independent microgrids have also become a key solution for energy systems. Cheng Ping pointed out that microgrids cover power generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and consumption, meaning that building a data center also requires considering many issues related to overall power demand or power management.
Delta Electronics has been布局微电网 for ten years, betting on key technologies SST and SOFC. Cheng Ping said Delta has mostly focused on the "white space" of AI data centers in the past, namely power supply and cooling solutions inside data centers. In fact, the company has spent more than ten years gradually building a presence in microgrids, establishing important components and products, and this year further investing in overall architecture and applications. He emphasized that one of the important parts of a microgrid is power generation. Whether using renewable energy or fossil energy, efficiency must be valued; from transmission and distribution to storage and consumption, improving the performance of the overall solution is equally important.
Among them, two more distinctive products are solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and solid-state transformers (SST). Cheng Ping introduced that SOFC can use hydrogen or natural gas to generate electricity. Compared with the roughly 36% conversion efficiency of general small natural gas power generation equipment, SOFC combined with energy recovery can achieve an overall energy utilization efficiency of 80%, more than double the previous figure. He emphasized that Delta has invested in this technology for many years and expects mass production next year.
"It not only has high power generation efficiency, but it can also be deployed in a distributed manner." He also mentioned that SOFC has advantages in air pollutant emissions, providing companies with an option for on-site power generation. Another product, SST, can reduce the number of times power is transmitted and converted in data centers. Cheng Ping said that through a DC power supply architecture, overall power conversion efficiency can be raised to about 92%, a further improvement over the traditional model. To make it easier for customers to use, Delta also integrates the equipment into a system, completes assembly at the factory, and then transports it to the site, where it can be used after connection.
"In the past, Delta was mostly on the power consumption side, but now we have moved to considering the entire process from generation, distribution, storage, to use." Cheng Ping emphasized that in the face of rapidly increasing power demand from AI data centers, energy management must start from the overall system. "It is no longer a problem of a single product or a single conversion." From power supply and cooling to power generation and microgrids, Delta's more than ten years of investment are precisely meant to respond to the increasingly urgent energy challenges under this wave of electrification.
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