Months, mapped.

"Energized in months" is the behind-the-meter pitch, and it can be true — but only as the sum of phases, each with its own gate. A realistic BTM timeline runs: site and gas control, then permitting, equipment procurement, construction and commissioning, then energization. The honest version of the months-not-years claim names where each phase stands today. The version to distrust is the one that skips to the ending.

The anatomy

Five phases. Site and gas control — land owned or leased, firm fuel signed. Permitting — air authorization from the TCEQ, the regulatory gate. Procurement — generation equipment, switchgear, and balance of plant, ordered against real lead times. Construction and commissioning — civil work, mechanical and electrical installation, then testing each unit and the plant as a system. Energization — first firm power to the load, usually in tranches as capacity phases in. Every credible schedule is built from these blocks; the differences between providers are which blocks are already done. Name where each phase stands and the claim becomes checkable; leave them bundled and it is marketing.

What runs in parallel

The good news is that the phases overlap heavily. Equipment can be ordered while permits are in review. Civil work that doesn't require the air permit can advance early. Gas infrastructure and power infrastructure proceed on separate tracks. Commissioning of early units can begin while later units are still arriving. A developer who has done this before compresses the calendar by running everything the gates allow — which is why two projects with identical scopes can carry very different schedules. The sequencing plan is itself a diligence artifact worth requesting.

What gates

Three things refuse to parallelize. The air permit gates construction of the permitted equipment — no authorization, no build. Equipment delivery gates commissioning — machines not yet ordered are the longest pole in any schedule, and lead times for generation equipment are a queue of their own. And commissioning gates energization — testing takes the time it takes, and rushing it trades schedule for reliability. Money compresses many things; these three it merely decorates. A provider's real timeline is the sum of its unretired gates.

How to interrogate a claim

Ask where each phase stands, with documents. Is the land closed? Is the gas signed? Are permits issued or pending? Is equipment on order, with delivery dates, or on a quote? Has commissioning of anything begun? A provider months from energization can answer all five in the data room. This is the logic behind the provider evaluation framework, and it is why Corley Energy leads with land secured, gas signed, and permits pulled at Power Foundry: those are the phases that gate everything else. The months-not-years advantage over the grid queue is real — for projects that have actually banked the early phases.

About Corley Energy

Corley Energy is a behind-the-meter independent power producer, founded in 2024 by Jake Corley, Tim Bozeman, and Mark Meyer. We convert stranded Permian Basin natural gas into firm, contracted electricity for AI data centers at Power Foundry, our ~1,000-acre development in Upton County, Texas. Start with what a power foundry is, see the company facts, or check current capacity on the Sites page.

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