Announced, energised and available megawatts are three different numbers. What each one means when you are comparing hosting offers, and which one to ask about.
The capacity figures three different hosts give you will sound comparable, and they usually are not. The word megawatt is doing a lot of quiet work in those sentences, and the difference between the versions is where deployments slip by months.
Three numbers need separating.
Announced capacity
This is the size of the project. It usually reflects a grid study, a reservation, an interconnection queue position, or a plan on a piece of land the operator controls. It is a real number in the sense that somebody has done arithmetic. It is not a number you can plug hardware into.
Announced capacity is legitimate to publish, as long as it is labelled. The problem starts when it appears in a sales conversation without the label.
Energised capacity
Energised means the transformer is in place, the switchgear is commissioned, and power is flowing to the distribution inside the building or container. This is the number that matters for a deployment this quarter.
The gap between announced and energised is usually not the operator being evasive. It is the interconnection process, long-lead items like transformers, and the utility's own schedule. Those timelines have been long across most markets for several years now, and an operator who tells you a transformer date without a purchase order behind it is guessing.
Available capacity
Energised capacity that is not already occupied. An operator can have, say, 12 MW energised and nothing free, because the site filled up. For your purposes, available capacity is the only number that answers the question you asked.
The questions that separate them
Four questions get you from a headline number to something you can plan against.
- How many megawatts are energised today, and since when?
- How much of that is unoccupied and can take hardware this quarter?
- For anything not yet energised, what is the specific gating item, and is it ordered?
- What is the last date on which a deployment slot can be moved without cost?
A well-run host can answer all four in a single call. If the answers take weeks, you have learned something about how the offer is put together.
Why the label matters
A fleet that lands two months before its capacity does is a fleet in a warehouse, accruing storage and depreciation while it earns nothing. A fleet that lands two months after is capacity paid for and not used, depending on how the agreement is written. Both errors come from a single unlabelled number early in the conversation.
The fix is unglamorous: ask which number you are being given, and write the answer down. In the agreement, that answer can be a single line: "Customer allocation: [x] kW, energised from [start date]; remedy if not."
Our operations page states our total capacity and the number of active projects, and states what is confirmed rather than filling the gap with a plan. Announced and energised capacity are also defined in our glossary.
