That gap tends to surface at the worst possible time: after the concrete is poured, after tenants have signed, sometimes after a building is fully leased and still waiting on a power connection it was told would be routine. The building is done. The site is not.
Ron Yeffet, a real estate developer who has managed projects across the United States, Israel, Europe, and Africa, along with work in energy supply and power plants, sees this pattern often enough that he treats energy capacity as a line item in early planning rather than a detail to confirm later. That order matters. A site that looks ready on paper can still be years away from the power it needs.
Why the Gap Forms
The gap forms because construction and energy infrastructure run on different clocks, and almost nobody is watching both at once.
A developer’s timeline is driven by permits, financing, and labor. A utility’s timeline is driven by generation capacity, transmission upgrades, and its own queue of other projects asking for the same thing. These two clocks rarely run at the same speed, and in markets where the grid is still being built out, they can be years apart.
In mature markets, the assumption that power will simply arrive is usually a safe one. In markets where infrastructure is expanding alongside the buildings going up on top of it, that assumption is where projects lose their footing. A developer working across Africa, parts of Europe, or fast-growing corridors in the US learns quickly that the two clocks need separate tracking, not one shared assumption that they’ll sync up on their own.
Where the Assumptions Break
Three assumptions cause most of the trouble:
- That a utility’s stated timeline for a new connection reflects current queue length, not just standard process.
- That existing grid infrastructure near a site has spare capacity, rather than being already allocated to other approved projects.
- That energy planning can start once construction financing closes, instead of running alongside site selection.
Any one of these, left unchecked, can turn a finished building into a building that sits empty for months waiting on power.
What to Check Before You Commit
The fix is not complicated, but it does require treating energy capacity as its own due diligence track rather than folding it into “utilities” on a checklist.
Ask the utility directly, in writing, what current queue length looks like for a connection of the size the project needs. A verbal assurance from a broker or a local contact is not the same as a written response from the utility itself.
Find out what else is already drawing on the same substation or transmission line. A site can have power lines running past it and still have no meaningful capacity left, because three other projects got there first.
Separate the energy timeline from the construction timeline in the project plan, and track both independently. If the energy timeline runs longer, the construction schedule needs to account for that gap rather than assume it will close on its own.
Build in a fallback power option for markets where grid timelines are uncertain. This does not need to be permanent. It needs to cover the period between a building’s completion and a stable grid connection, so tenants are not waiting on both at once.
Ron Yeffet’s work in power plants and energy supply, alongside real estate development, puts him in a position to see this from both sides. Where many developers treat energy as someone else’s problem to solve on schedule, his experience runs closer to the source: knowing what a power project’s own timeline actually looks like from the inside changes how a developer reads a utility’s promises on the outside.
Building in Buffer, Not Blame
None of this is about assigning fault to utilities or regulators for slow timelines. Grids expand at the pace their funding and engineering allow, and that pace is often out of any single developer’s control.
What is in a developer’s control is how early the question gets asked, and how much buffer gets built into the plan once the answer comes back. A project that assumes power will be ready on schedule has no room to absorb a delay. A project that checks capacity early, tracks the two timelines separately, and plans a bridge for the gap between them can absorb a slow utility response without losing months of leasing income.
The sites that run into trouble are rarely the ones in genuinely under-served areas, where everyone expects a longer runway and plans for it. They are the ones that look fully served on the surface, where nobody thought to ask what else was already drawing on the same line.