Glossary¶

Site criteria¶

Zoning Land-use classification assigned by local government. This framework requires industrial zoning, which permits heavy infrastructure.

Distance to residential Minimum required separation between a data center and the nearest residential area, measured in meters.

Water-stressed basin A watershed where demand for water regularly exceeds available supply. Sites in these areas are excluded by default.

Drought sustainable Whether a site can maintain operations under projected drought conditions without drawing unsustainable water resources.

Substation capacity Whether the local electrical substation has sufficient spare capacity to serve the facility without a major upgrade.

Interconnection timeline Time in years to connect a new site to the regional transmission grid. Long timelines increase project risk and cost.

Major new transmission Whether the site would require construction of new high-voltage transmission lines. This is a significant cost and permitting burden.

Grid upgrade cost allocation Whether the operator (rather than ratepayers) bears the cost of any required grid upgrades.

Demand response Ability to reduce power consumption on request from the grid operator, helping balance supply during peak periods.

Continuous noise monitoring Ongoing measurement of operational noise levels to ensure compliance with local standards.

Framework terms¶

Candidate site A proposed location submitted for evaluation against the policy criteria.

Admissibility Whether a site satisfies all required policy criteria. A site is either admissible (PASS) or inadmissible (FAIL) — there is no partial credit.

Policy The set of thresholds and requirements used to evaluate candidate sites. Policies are defined in TOML format and can be adjusted for different jurisdictions.