You own a building. It was built in the 1990s for a different era. Four story commercial building, decent occupancy, running fine. Then one of your anchor tenants doubles their footprint. They need to move in a call center, add cold storage, upgrade their HVAC for the new space. Same building, more capacity needed. So you call the utility.
The utility studies the additional demand and the network work it would require. Cost, easements and timing depend on the property and local network. An actual utility upgrade offer is the starting point for comparing alternatives.
Meanwhile, your tenant says, "We have a timeline. We need to be operational in four months. If you can't support the power we need, we'll move to the other building across town that can."
This is the commercial and industrial power gap. And it's happening at scale.
EV charging creates a sudden power crisis
Add to that the EV charging situation. Five years ago, you had one or two parking spaces with Level 2 chargers for employee vehicles. A few kilowatts. No big deal. But now every building needs to offer charging to attract tenants and employees. A parking lot with 50 spaces means 50 to 100 kilowatts of new load. For a commercial building, that's a significant bump on the electrical panel.
And that's just the beginning. EV charging is accelerating. Tesla's supercharger standard is becoming industry standard. Apartment buildings need 7 to 10 kilowatts per space. Office parks need similar. That adds up fast. Suddenly you're looking at power demands that your current service can't support, and the utility's answer is always the same. It takes years.
Every building owner hits the same constraint
The commercial and industrial power market is 250 billion dollars. That's how much businesses spend on electricity every year. And across that entire market, thousands of building owners are sitting on the same problem. They can't expand. They can't add tenants. They can't install EV charging. Not because the technology doesn't exist. But because the wires going into the building can't carry the load.
You've got warehouse owners who want to add refrigeration for a new product line but the electrical panel is maxed out. Manufacturing facilities that want to expand their production floor but need more power than the building service can provide. Data centers that want to collocate tenants but don't have enough capacity. Hospitals that want to expand their surgical suite but their electrical infrastructure is at limit.
The common constraint is additional capacity. When the utility’s proposed schedule misses the project window, an operator may have to delay expansion, change the load plan or evaluate on-site supply.
Diesel backup doesn't work for continuous load
The instinct is to install a backup generator. You already have one for emergencies. Why not use it for the extra load? The answer is cost and practicality. Diesel generators are designed for short-duration backup. They're not meant to run continuously. You're looking at fuel consumption that kills the economics. Oil changes every few hundred hours. Maintenance costs that stack up. Noise issues with continuous operation.
And if you're trying to attract quality tenants, especially in sustainable-focused industries, telling them their power comes from a diesel generator isn't going to work. They want clean energy. They want their operations aligned with their corporate commitments. A diesel backup contradicts that message.
The solution is distributed, on-site power
What building owners and facility managers may need is the ability to generate power on site, work in parallel with the grid, and add capacity on a shorter timeline than a major utility upgrade. The site still requires emissions, acoustic, permitting, fuel, and electrical review.
The DOR is being developed for this use case, with first pilots planned for 2027.
You don't need to wait for the grid. You need to build your own power infrastructure.
This is why we built Immedia Power
We started Immedia because building owners were telling us the same story over and over. They have the tenants. They have the expansion plans. They have the capital ready. But the electrical panel is the constraint. Not because upgrading the panel is expensive. But because upgrading the grid connection takes years. Years they don't have.
The grid has traditionally determined where and when businesses can grow. Immedia Power changes that. We combine our unique power-generation system with Power OS, our embedded AI layer, to create the DOR, a new distributed power platform that gives space-constrained sites the on-site power they need to run and scale without waiting on the grid.
The DOR (Distributed On-demand Resource) targets 200 kW continuous output, a 15-square-foot footprint, and a 700-kilogram package. The design supports natural gas, CNG, LPG, biofuel, and hydrogen blends. Placement and fuel configuration must be approved for each site.
The DOR's electrical architecture is designed to operate in parallel with available utility power, adding on-site capacity for uses such as new tenants, EV charging, and manufacturing expansion. The configuration and deployment path must be validated for each site.
The architecture is designed to parallel multiple 200 kW units and to support remote monitoring through Power OS. Final capacity, controls, and redundancy are determined during site engineering.
The engineering targets include 69 dBA at five meters and configurations for commercial and industrial sites. Emissions and site suitability are assessed through permitting and site engineering.
If you're managing a facility that's constrained by power capacity, reach out to discuss whether a future pilot could fit your site.