LEARN / GLOSSARY
Behind-the-meter
Generation or storage on the customer side of the utility meter, serving that site directly. It sits outside the datasets used to track grid connection, which makes a growing share of capacity invisible to the public record.
Definition
Behind-the-meter describes equipment installed on the customer side of the revenue meter: rooftop solar, on-site generation, batteries, backup plant. Electricity produced there serves the site first, and only surplus, where rules allow, flows onto the grid.
Measurement noteBerkeley Lab states that its interconnection queue dataset covers generation seeking transmission connection and excludes behind-the-meter projects, along with distribution-connected projects and load interconnection requests. A large facility building its own generation on site therefore appears in none of the national queue figures, and neither does the load it serves.
Why it matters for capacity
On-site generation has become a route around interconnection delay for facilities that can afford it, which changes who waits and who does not. It also means published queue and mix statistics increasingly describe the part of the system that goes through the public process, while a growing share of capacity is arranged privately and counted nowhere.
Related terms
Utility-scale · Interconnection queue · Large load
Appears in
Data Centers and the Grid
Why Electricity Demand Is Growing Again
Read next
Sources
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up: 2026 Edition. emp.lbl.gov
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Wind and solar generated a record 17% of U.S. electricity in 2025. eia.gov
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Hourly Electric Grid Monitor. eia.gov