Behind-The-Meter Power

A behind-the-meter burner serves the campus directly, ahead of the utility meter, so on-site generation offsets import rather than selling into the grid.

Which side of the meter

Generation can sit in front of the meter, selling wholesale energy to the grid, or behind the meter, serving a specific load first and treating the grid as a secondary path. For a data center, behind-the-meter placement means the burner's output goes straight to the compute bus, and the utility connection carries only the difference — import when the plant is short, export when it is long.

This arrangement fits the burner's design intent. Because the plant is co-located, most of its energy never touches the public network, reducing transmission dependence and interconnection scale. The utility relationship shrinks to a balancing and backup service rather than a full-requirements supply.

Behind-the-meter placement raises the stakes on reliability, which is where candor is required. If the campus leans on on-site generation as its primary source, then the on-site generation's availability becomes the campus availability unless something covers the gap. With the burner at 0.86-0.995 against a Tier III need of 0.99982, the grid import path and the battery layer are not optional extras — they are the mechanism that makes a behind-the-meter burner acceptable to a hyperscale operator.

In short, behind-the-meter is the natural topology for a co-located firm source, but only as the primary layer of a redundant design, never as a sole supply today.

• On-site generation serves the load ahead of the meter
• Grid handles only the net difference
• Reduces transmission dependence and interconnection size
• Requires grid + storage backup because of the availability gate