On the customer’s side of the utility’s meter. Behind-the-meter generation is a power plant on the datacenter site, at its extreme connected to nothing else. Chapter 6.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
Defined in Chapter 6 — Firm, Around-the-Clock.
Where the book uses it
- Chapter 6 — Firm, Around-the-Clock
Where the electricity comes from: grid queues, transformers, turbines and the firm power a datacenter needs every hour of the year, on calendars the buildout does not control.
Related terms
From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.
How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “Behind the meter.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/behind-the-meter (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-behind-the-meter-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{Behind the meter}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/behind-the-meter},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}