Every conversation about adding power to a site eventually reaches the meter. The device itself is small. What it divides is not. On one side sit the utility, the transmission network and the power plants that feed it. On the other side sit your building, your load and anything you install to serve it. Which side a new power source sits on decides which rules, which queue and which permits apply. That is the whole distinction, and it is worth getting right before anyone quotes a timeline.
In front of the meter
Front-of-the-meter assets connect on the utility side. Power plants, transmission lines, utility-scale batteries and solar farms all live here. They sell electricity into a wholesale market or to the utility under contract, and they enter the generator interconnection process of the regional grid operator before they can energize.
That process is where the long queue statistics come from. Berkeley Lab and GridTracker report a median of more than five years from request to commercial operation for generation projects built in 2025, in the regions with data. Their dataset excludes load connections, distribution-connected projects and behind-the-meter projects. Our grid-connection evidence page sets out what those figures do and do not say about an electricity buyer.
Behind the meter
Behind-the-meter assets connect on the customer side. Rooftop solar, a battery in the basement, a standby generator, a combined heat and power unit, an on-site generation unit: all of these are behind the meter when they feed the site’s own load before anything else. The meter registers what the site still draws from the grid, so behind-the-meter generation shows up as lower imports, not as sales.
The rules follow the location. A behind-the-meter installation follows the customer’s load-connection agreement, local permitting and the utility’s interconnection review for equipment that operates in parallel with the grid. It does not enter the generator queue that a power plant enters. Whether any surplus may flow back to the grid, and what the utility pays for it, depends on the connection agreement, not on where the equipment stands.
Behind the meter is a location, not a technology and not a billing plan. Net metering is a billing arrangement. A behind-the-meter system may or may not have one.
Three phrases that get mixed up
Behind the meter vs. net metering
Net metering is a tariff. It lets a customer with behind-the-meter generation, most often solar, offset imports with exports on the same bill. Many behind-the-meter systems, including generation sized to the site’s own load, never export and never touch a net-metering tariff.
Behind-the-meter solar or storage vs. behind-the-meter generation
Solar and batteries behind the meter shift energy in time or add it when the sun allows. Behind-the-meter generation adds capacity that can run when the site needs it, subject to fuel supply and permits. The two are often combined; they solve different problems.
Front-of-the-meter storage
A battery can sit on either side. In front of the meter it trades in the market. Behind the meter it serves one customer. Same hardware, different rulebook.
Why data centers keep asking about it
A site that has outgrown its grid connection has two paths. It can ask the utility for more, or it can add supply on its own side of the meter while the utility works. The first path increasingly waits on equipment as well as on studies. The US Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity reports that lead times for transformer orders, particularly distribution transformers, rose from three to six months in 2019 to 12 to 30 months in 2023, and that utility trade members saw average lead times for distribution transformers rise 443 percent between 2020 and 2022, with orders that had taken two to four months taking 22 to 33 months (DOE, Office of Electricity, accessed 15 September 2026).
That is why behind-the-meter power for data centers has become a common question. Operators want compute, cooling and supporting loads served on a schedule the site controls, alongside the grid connection they already have. Behind-the-meter generation is one way to do that. It is not a shortcut around engineering.
What actually changes for a site
Moving generation behind the meter changes the path, not the homework. Expect the following.
- Permitting. Air, noise, fuel storage and building permits apply to on-site equipment regardless of which side of the meter it sits on.
- Utility review. Any generation that runs in parallel with the grid needs the utility’s interconnection review for protection and safety. It is a different process from a generator queue, not an absence of one.
- Export. Serving your own load is one thing. Exporting surplus is a separate agreement, and it may not be offered.
- Fuel and space. Gas supply, deliveries or hydrogen blends, and the clearances around the equipment, are site questions the meter does not answer.
- Continuity. Adding capacity alongside the grid and keeping selected loads running during an outage are different engineering decisions. The second needs an engineered island configuration and does not imply seamless transfer.
Where the DOR is designed to fit
This is the configuration we are developing for. The DOR (Distributed On-demand Resource) is a distributed power platform designed to add permanent, behind-the-meter capacity alongside an existing grid connection. Each unit targets 200 kW of electrical output from about 15 square feet, with planned natural gas, CNG, LPG, biofuel and hydrogen-blend configurations, and units are designed to operate in parallel as a site grows. Grid-tied, standalone and microgrid are planned operating modes. The DOR is pre-pilot; an integrated prototype has not yet been built or tested, and first pilots are planned for 2027. The technology page and the FAQ carry the qualifiers.
Short answers
What is behind-the-meter power generation?
Electricity generated on the customer’s side of the utility meter and used first by the site itself, so the site imports less from the grid.
Behind the meter vs. in front of the meter: which is faster?
It depends on the site. Behind-the-meter projects avoid the generator interconnection queue, but they still need permits and the utility’s parallel-operation review, and equipment lead times apply to both paths.
Is behind the meter the same as net metering?
No. Behind the meter describes where equipment connects. Net metering is a billing tariff for exporting surplus, which many behind-the-meter systems never use.