Energy infrastructure on your side of the utility meter
Behind the meter (BTM) refers to energy systems, equipment, and electrical infrastructure located on the customer’s side of the utility revenue meter. Unlike front-of-the-meter (FTM) utility assets, power produced or managed behind the meter serves the facility’s electrical loads directly—without having to travel through the utility meter first.
By combining on-site generation with storage behind the meter, facilities can lower peak demand charges, optimize time-of-use tariffs, and provide resilient backup power during grid disruptions.
Escalating Grid Demand & Volatile Tariffs
Unpredictable Demand Penalties
A single 15-minute load spike can set your peak demand rate for an entire billing cycle or year. Demand charges now dominate utility bills for large power users — and they compound with every grid stress event.
Mission-Critical Downtime
Rising grid stress increases the operational risk of brownouts, voltage sags, and unplanned outages. For continuous industrial processes, hospital wings, and municipal infrastructure, grid dependency is an unacceptable liability.
Sustainability Mandates
MUSH institutions and major industrial operators face strict decarbonization requirements with limited capital budgets. Waiting on central grid updates is no longer a viable compliance strategy.
Built for High-Consequence Facilities
The Process
Preliminary Feasibility & Order-of-Magnitude Modeling
Before committing a significant capital spend, we evaluate your facility's 15-minute interval meter data to establish an accurate order of magnitude financial and generation analysis. By simulating your exact utility rate tariffs, peak demand charges, and solar/BESS dispatch, we determine the technical and financial viability of the project—providing the transparent, bankable data your executive team needs to make a confident go/no-go decision.
Moving Forward: End-to-End Project Delivery
Once you make the decision to proceed, PeakShift Energy Consulting serves as your project manager and owner's representative across five core delivery phases:
The Capacity Squeeze: Why Grid Costs Keep Rising
The Market Drivers
Traditional thermal generation is retiring faster than utility-scale renewables and transmission lines can be interconnected. Simultaneously, overall load is expanding rapidly due to manufacturing reshoring, fleet electrification, and data center buildouts. In wholesale markets — PJM, MISO, NYISO — capacity auction clearing prices have spiked. Utilities pass these systemic costs directly to C&I consumers through escalated capacity pass-throughs, coincident peak penalties, and higher peak demand tariffs.
The BTM Solution
Centralized generation merely builds more supply to chase an ever-growing peak. Because capacity is a function of both generation and load, on-site generation — solar PV, combined heat and power, and/or battery storage — effectively subtracts load from the bulk power system. By serving high industrial loads locally at the meter, on-site resources directly eliminate the peak demand that the centralized grid must build for, mitigating the need to construct and finance expensive grid-scale generation and transmission additions.
"On-site generation doesn’t just add supply — it subtracts load from the grid entirely."
Demand Response & Capacity Aggregation
Through FERC Order 2222, behind-the-meter batteries and smart building loads can participate directly in wholesale capacity and ancillary services markets.
Frequency & Voltage Support
Advanced inverters paired with on-site storage deliver rapid reactive power and frequency regulation, stabilizing localized feeder lines without utility capital expenditure.
Locational Value
In congested transmission corridors, distributed energy resources act as non-wires alternatives, deferring or replacing high-cost utility substation upgrades while generating revenue for the host facility.