Announced is not
the same as energized.
Every developer can show you a map. This is the method that decides whether the capacity on it is real, and the order in which we find out.
Where capital is lost
A capacity number is only worth the verification behind it.
The gap between a project being announced and a project delivering power is where capital in this market is lost. Projects rarely fail at construction. They fail much earlier, when a site was marketed on an assumption about the interconnection queue that nobody had tested, and the assumption took years to disprove.
So we publish the method rather than the map. If you are underwriting us, the useful question is not how much capacity we claim. It is what we had to prove before we were willing to claim it.
Four gates.
A gate is a stop.
Each gate has to close before the next one opens. A project that fails a gate goes back or stops; it does not proceed on the assumption that the problem resolves later.
- 01
Site screen
Land, access, fiber, water, zoning posture and community context, assessed before anyone is asked for anything. Most sites end here, and ending here is cheap. Ending at gate three is not.
- 02
Power: verified, or built
The gate the market skips, and it has two routes. Where the grid is the source, we establish what the utility will deliver and by when, and study the interconnection path rather than inferring it from a queue position. Where it is not, we build the generation ourselves. Capacity is not called available before this gate closes.
- 03
Entitlement, offtake and financing
Permits and entitlement on a confirmed path with the authority having jurisdiction, offtake structured, and capital committed against a phase that stands on its own. An LOI is not an offtake and we do not present one as such.
- 04
Notice to proceed, construction and commissioning
Only after the first three close. Construction and commissioning go out under the Nerd Power name, and the crews, licenses and commissioned systems behind that name are the reason the schedule is a schedule rather than a projection.
The bar
What has to be true first.
The checklist that gates two and three have to satisfy before we call capacity available. Until every line is true, a site is development work and not capacity you can contract.
An interconnection path we have studied
NotA queue position we have assumed
A written position from the utility, where the grid is the source
NotA conversation
Land controlled
NotIdentified
An entitlement path confirmed with the authority having jurisdiction
A phase one that stands alone
NotA phase that needs revenue from a later one
Capital committed against that phase
NotIndicated
A delivery team that has energized comparable systems before
Gate two
Power is verified, or it is built.
A queue position is not power. It is a place in a line whose length, cost and outcome can all change, and a study that has not been done is not a study that will come back clean. Treating the two as equivalent is how a site gets marketed years before it can deliver.
So gate two asks these questions in writing, of two routes rather than one. Of the grid: what can this utility actually deliver to this point, at what voltage, on what timeline, and what upgrades sit between here and there. Of generation we build ourselves: utility scale solar, BESS, CHP and gas, sited, permitted and built, behind the meter or in front of it, matched to the load profile and the economics of the site rather than to a single technology.
Building it is not a fallback for when the queue is slow. It is the other way to arrive at firm power, and generation we control is a different risk profile from capacity we are queuing for. Where neither route answers, the site stops at gate two, and we would rather tell you that than sell you the map.
ProjectsDivision of work
Who does what,
and under which name.
A diligence reader checks these against the entity records. Kilgore Energy LLC is one legal entity with two operating businesses, Kilgore Energy and Nerd Power; Nerd Power is its registered trade name.
- Gates 1 to 3
Development: Kilgore Energy
Siting, power verification, interconnection, entitlement, offtake structuring and capital. The decision to stop sits here too.
- Gate 4
Delivery: under the Nerd Power name
Construction and commissioning, with the crews, licenses and permitting history behind them. The same legal entity, so the record and the contracting party do not diverge.
- By scope
Specialist scopes: execution partners
Brought in where a project needs capability we do not hold ourselves. Named on a project only where the partner has agreed to be named.
Phasing
Phase one funds phase two, or there is no phase two.
A campus that only works at full build is a campus that depends on everything going right for several years in a row. We size the first phase to stand on its own: its own power, its own offtake, its own economics, and no line in its model that assumes revenue from a phase nobody has committed to yet.
That constrains what we can announce early, which is the point. It also means a phase that energizes is a phase that pays for the next one, and a phase that stalls does not take the rest of the site down with it.
How this shows up on a campus
Audit the method.
Stage gate documentation, interconnection status and phasing models are released per opportunity through our data room, after a conversation and an NDA. If you are underwriting a project with us, this is the material you should be asking for, and it is more useful than anything on this page.
Announced is not energized. → The gates are how we find out.
Ask the development team