MetroVolt: Sovereign Compute Power

MetroVolt is the data-center housing of the burner: an on-site power concept for compute infrastructure whose availability must meet demanding standards.

Power for compute at the source

MetroVolt is the second housing of the burner (the first being Aegis for fixed defense installations). It targets data centers: co-located, on-site power for compute infrastructure. The appeal is the same as the defense case, grid independence and a long fuel-resupply interval, applied to facilities whose power demand is large, continuous, and growing.

Compute infrastructure is increasingly a national-security concern: sovereign compute capacity depends on power that is reliable and not exposed to grid-wide disruption. On-site generation localizes that dependence to the facility, aligning with the distributed-resilience thinking used across this section.

The availability bar is highest here

Data centers set the strictest availability standard in this analysis: Tier III-class facilities expect 0.99982, tens of minutes of downtime per year. The burner's design-stage availability of 0.86-0.995 is 30-100x short of that, so MetroVolt cannot be a sole Tier III source today. It is a candidate layer within a redundant power architecture, subject to all four burner gates.

• MetroVolt = burner in a data-center housing
• On-site power localizes the grid dependence
• Data centers set the strictest bar: Tier III 0.99982
• Burner 0.86-0.995 is 30-100x short; not a sole source today

MetroVolt's honest positioning is as a candidate prime-power layer for compute, not a replacement for the redundant power architecture data centers already require. The value it would add is a long-fuel-interval, grid-independent source within that architecture. Whether it can contribute at Tier III sites depends on closing the availability gap through redundancy and complementary sources, because its single-unit figure is far short of the standard.

Design-and-simulation stage; no power-delivery claim is made.