Glossary.
The terms that carry weight in powered-land transactions, defined the way they're used in diligence.
Powered land
Real property with secured, utility-confirmed electrical capacity — at minimum an executed interconnection agreement, at best an energized and commissioned substation.
Interconnection Agreement (IA)
The binding contract in which a utility commits capacity and terms of service to a specific site. The dividing line between marketing language and powered land.
ERCOT
Electric Reliability Council of Texas — the independent operator of the Texas grid, covering about 90% of the state's load.
Distribution vs. transmission
Two tiers of the grid. Distribution serves loads under standard utility processes; transmission-level connection puts a project into the multi-year large-load study queue.
SB6 (Texas, 2025)
The Texas law that created the large-load interconnection framework — enhanced studies, disclosure and curtailment provisions — for loads of 75MW and above.
Large load
Under SB6, a site with aggregate demand of 75MW or greater, subject to the enhanced large-load framework.
MW / MVA
Megawatts measure real power delivered; megavolt-amperes measure apparent power equipment must carry. Transformers are rated in MVA, tenant contracts in MW.
MV distribution service
Utility distribution service delivered at medium voltage, distributed on-site at 34.5kV and stepped to 480V at unit substations.
Unit substation
A packaged 34.5kV-to-480V transformer and switchgear assembly serving one landing zone. PowerPad sites deploy standardized 2.5MVA unit substations scaled to the tenant's topology.
Main-tie-main
A switchgear arrangement with two incoming mains and a tie breaker, letting either source carry the full bus during maintenance or a fault.
N+1
Redundancy sizing: one more unit than the load requires, so a single failure never interrupts service. The reason two smaller units beat one large one.
Commissioning (L1–L5)
The five-level test sequence from factory witness through integrated systems testing. TPDS infrastructure is commissioned through energization (L1–L3); L4–L5 complete with the tenant fit-out.
Dark fiber
Installed but unlit fiber optic strands leased to a tenant, who supplies their own optical transport equipment. Diverse entries mean two physically separate routes into the site.
Meet-me point
A carrier-neutral location where tenant and carrier fiber interconnect — no single carrier controls access to the site.
DWDM
Dense wavelength-division multiplexing — running many independent channels over one fiber pair, how tenants scale bandwidth on leased dark fiber.
Entitlement
The bundle of governmental approvals — zoning, platting, permits — that lets a site be developed for its intended use. Cleared before TPDS calls a site deliverable.
Ground lease
A long-term lease of land (and here, its power infrastructure) where the tenant owns its improvements. The structure behind the PowerPad deployment model.
EPMS / SCADA
Electrical power monitoring and supervisory control systems — the instrumentation layer that makes a site's performance observable and auditable.
Reg D
A family of SEC exemptions under which private offerings may be made to accredited investors without public registration.
PowerPad
The TPDS engineered site standard: civil, water, fiber, medium voltage, controls and entitlements delivered identically on every site. Go inside the spec →