The AI power glossary.

The AI power buildout runs on vocabulary borrowed from three industries at once — the oilfield, the power market, and the data center. Here is the working glossary: the terms you will meet in this space, defined plainly.

Behind-the-meter (BTM). Power generation on the customer's side of the utility meter, serving load directly without crossing the transmission grid — no interconnection request, no queue. The model at the heart of fast AI data center power.

Front-of-meter. Generation connected to the public grid, selling power through the wholesale market or a utility. It requires interconnection and transmission to reach any load, and inherits the grid's timelines.

Independent power producer (IPP). A company that owns and operates power generation and sells the output under contract, rather than operating as a regulated utility serving the public.

Power purchase agreement (PPA). A long-term contract in which a buyer commits to purchase power from a specific generator at agreed pricing and terms — the standard commercial instrument that finances new generation.

Take-or-pay. A contract structure in which the buyer pays for a contracted quantity whether or not it takes delivery. It guarantees the seller's revenue and, in exchange, guarantees the buyer's supply.

Firm power. Electricity backed by a commitment to deliver — generation, fuel, and redundancy sized so the power is there whenever the load wants it, as opposed to interruptible or as-available supply.

Interruptible. Power sold with the explicit right to curtail delivery under defined conditions, usually priced at a discount to firm. Acceptable for flexible loads; unacceptable for most contracted AI workloads.

Bridge power. Temporary generation that energizes a load before its permanent supply is complete — often mobile turbines or engines serving a data center while the permanent plant or grid service is built.

Powered land. Land marketed with power already secured — generation on site or capacity under contract — so a data center developer acquires the site and the electrons together.

Power foundry. Dedicated behind-the-meter generation built where the fuel is, purpose-built to energize AI data centers on the same ground. Coined by Corley Energy for its Upton County, Texas development.

Interconnection queue. The waiting line of projects that have asked a grid operator for a connection. Requests are studied in order or in clusters, and the queue's calendar — not the project's — sets the timeline.

Cluster study. An interconnection study that evaluates a group of requests together against a shared network model. Any project's withdrawal or change can restart the math for the whole group.

ERCOT. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas — operator of the Texas grid and its energy-only wholesale market, which covers most of the state, including the Permian Basin.

Large load. Grid-operator term for an unusually big electricity consumer, such as an AI data center, subject to special interconnection review because of its size and its effect on the network.

Henry Hub. The Louisiana pipeline interchange that serves as the pricing point for the U.S. natural gas benchmark — the price behind the national headline number.

Waha hub. The Permian Basin's natural gas pricing hub in West Texas. Its price reflects local supply against pipeline capacity, and it has repeatedly traded near or below zero.

Basis. The price difference between a local hub and a benchmark — for Permian gas, Waha minus Henry Hub. A wide or negative basis signals gas trapped in the basin.

Associated gas. Natural gas produced as a byproduct of oil drilling. Its supply follows oil economics rather than gas prices, which is why Permian gas keeps flowing even when gas is nearly worthless.

Stranded gas. Gas that cannot economically reach a market, typically because pipeline takeaway is full. It gets discounted, shut in, or flared — or consumed in-basin as fuel for power.

Flaring. Burning unwanted gas at the well site under permit. It disposes of the molecule and destroys its value — energy burned into the sky for nothing.

Shut-in. Closing a well and halting production, usually because output cannot reach market at an acceptable price. For an oil well, shutting in the gas can mean shutting in the oil with it.

Wellhead. The surface equipment at the top of a well — and shorthand for at the source. Wellhead gas is gas bought where it comes out of the ground, before transport.

Gathering. The network of smaller pipelines that moves gas from wellheads to processing plants and larger transmission lines — the first leg of the molecule's journey to market.

N+1. A redundancy standard: for every N units of equipment needed to serve the load, one spare is installed, so any single failure leaves capacity whole. Stricter variants (N+2, 2N) add more.

Islanded operation. Running generation and load as a self-contained system with no grid connection — the power system is its own island, engineered to stand alone.

Grid-parallel. Operating generation while connected to the grid, able to exchange power with it. The opposite of islanded operation.

Availability guarantee. The contractual uptime commitment a power provider makes — what fraction of hours the power will be there, and the remedies owed when it is not.

Energization. The moment a facility first receives power — the milestone the entire project schedule points toward, and the moment compute can start earning.

EPC. Engineering, procurement, and construction — the contract structure, and the contractor, responsible for designing, buying, and building an energy project.

Commissioning. The testing and verification phase between construction and operation, proving every system and failure mode performs as designed before the load depends on it.

Scarcity pricing. The mechanism by which an energy-only market like ERCOT lets prices rise steeply when reserves run short, so that scarcity itself pays for generation capacity.

Private use network. Electric facilities that generate and deliver power privately, without using the public grid — the framework under which co-located generation and load operate in Texas.

AI factory. A facility that mass-produces intelligence — training and inference at industrial scale — framed as a factory with industrial inputs, of which power is the defining one.

Speed to power. The elapsed time between committing to a site and having megawatts flowing to the load — the metric the AI buildout competes on, and the one grid queues fail.

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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Private use networks: how big loads take power off-market in Texas · Who provides behind-the-meter power for AI data centers? · Islanded vs grid-parallel operation · Browse the full library