This is the second article in our Capco and Hartigen’s PowerOptix series ‘Commercializing power for the AI economy’, which explores how organizations are redefining generation, commercialization, and digital operations in the era of AI.
The first wave of AI-driven power demand over the past several years has exposed a structural gap between energy needs and grid readiness. Large-scale data centers and high-performance computing facilities now require reliable, low-latency power delivery that traditional grid infrastructure cannot always provide.
As a result, companies are turning to behind-the-meter generation, building and contracting power sources directly adjacent to the load. This approach provides operational and commercial control, cost predictability, and future market flexibility.
Behind-the-meter power is quickly becoming the foundation of the AI energy economy, creating a bridge between private reliability and public market participation revenue optimization.
PowerOptix provides the commercial and operational foundation that allows behind-the-meter generation to function reliably and at scale. It connects high-frequency meter data, contractual pricing logic, and settlement processes into a single, auditable system, giving operators real-time visibility into power production, consumption, and commercial outcomes.
In practice, this foundation directly supports both reliability without waiting and economic control and predictability by ensuring that operational decisions and commercial settlement remain aligned in real time.
Reliability without waiting
Across North America, transmission congestion and interconnection queues have delayed new large-load connections by several years, often compounded by extended equipment and construction lead times. AI workloads cannot wait. Behind-the-meter generation allows operators to bypass grid constraints entirely, ensuring the uptime that high-compute environments demand.
Typical solutions include combined-cycle natural gas, reciprocating engines, renewable hybrids, battery energy storage systems (BESS), and emerging small modular reactor (SMR) technologies. Each provides self-supplied, reliable, dedicated capacity that keeps compute infrastructure running regardless of grid availability.
Economic control and predictability
Wholesale power prices are increasingly volatile. Behind-the-meter structures allow data centers and power producers to set long-term price certainty through private PPAs or self-owned generation. These agreements often tie to indexed fuel or performance benchmarks, offering both parties transparency and protection from market shocks.
With PowerOptix, metering, validation, and settlement processes are automated within a single commercial framework, reducing manual reconciliation and long-term operational cost while ensuring every megawatt-hour is priced, allocated, and invoiced correctly across complex, multi-decade PPAs.
Carbon strategy and ESG alignment
Behind-the-meter generation enables organizations to blend energy sources to meet internal sustainability goals. Operators can combine renewable, thermal, and storage assets under a unified commercial framework, achieving both reliability and carbon transparency.
Every unit of generation can be traced, validated and reported through the PowerOptix platform, creating audit-grade data for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting and regulatory disclosure.
Flexibility for market participation
Being behind the meter does not necessarily mean being isolated from the market. Modern facilities are engineered to be market-ready, with the option to export power when load, grid conditions or pricing make it commercially attractive, subject to defined operational and commercial guardrails that prioritize reliability.
Through PowerOptix, generators can seamlessly extend their Meter-to-Cash processes to support participation in ISO day-ahead and real-time (DA/RT) markets and their associated settlement structures, including the reporting and compliance requirements required for wholesale market participation, enabling dual participation in private PPAs today and market engagement tomorrow.
As AI workloads expand, so does the need for continuous, carbon-neutral power. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are increasingly being explored as one of several behind-the-meter generation options capable of meeting these requirements.
Their role in AI-scale power strategies reflects the same drivers discussed throughout this article: reliability, long-duration output, and control over energy supply. How SMRs and hybrid portfolios are being deployed in practice, and what they require from a commercial and digital standpoint, is explored in the next article in this series.
Together, Capco and Hartigen bring the operational, commercial and digital capabilities required to make behind-the-meter power bankable and scalable.
Hartigen’s PowerOptix provides the data and automation backbone by capturing and processing high-frequency meter data, applying complex contract and pricing logic, and generating accurate, auditable settlement and invoicing outputs.
PowerOptix also includes market-grade bid-to-bill logic designed to support participation across ISO and RTO markets in North America, enabling behind-the-meter operations to remain market-ready when and where participation is commercially and operationally appropriate.
Capco delivers the market design, regulatory, and integration expertise needed to align commercial models with real-world infrastructure, operational constraints, and compliance requirements.
The result is a ready-to-commercialize foundation for generators, data centers, and investors entering the AI power market.
Behind-the-meter generation is no longer a niche solution. It is becoming the dominant operating model for AI infrastructure, offering reliability, economic control, sustainability, and future market flexibility within a single framework.
Capco and Hartigen are enabling this transition by using PowerOptix to transform operational energy data into commercial intelligence and financial outcomes.
Together, we are helping clients move from power consumption to power commercialization – securely, transparently, and ready for what comes next.
