← All glossary terms

Data Center Design and Operations

Critical load

Critical load is the IT or facility load that must remain powered to avoid service interruption. It drives UPS, generator, switchgear, distribution, and redundancy design more directly than total campus load.

Explore more terms

Electric cooperative

Electric cooperative is member-owned and often serves rural or suburban territories. Cooperatives can be important for powered-land opportunities, but they may rely on generation and transmission cooperatives or wholesale providers for large-load supply.

Read definition →

Option agreement

Option agreement gives a party the right, but usually not the obligation, to buy or lease property later under specified terms. It is a common land-control tool while power, zoning, environmental, and diligence work is being resolved.

Read definition →

Demand response

Demand response is a customer or aggregator program that reduces load in response to price, reliability events, or dispatch signals. Critical data center load is hard to curtail, but batteries, cooling thermal inertia, backup systems, or flexible compute may create limited opportunities.

Read definition →