Firmness And Capacity Factor

Capacity factor is the average fraction of nameplate a plant delivers; for firm power what matters is not the average but the floor you can count on hourly.

Average is not enough

Capacity factor is annual energy divided by what the nameplate could have produced running flat out. A high capacity factor is necessary for firm power but not sufficient: a source could average high while still dropping out at unpredictable times. Data centers care about the floor — the capacity guaranteed in a specific hour — as much as the average.

The burner is designed for both a high capacity factor and a high, predictable floor while it runs. Because it is weather- and season-independent, its output does not collapse for reasons outside the plant. The dips it does have are maintenance and faults, which are scheduled or backed up rather than driven by nature.

But capacity factor and firmness both bow to the availability gate. A modelled 0.86-0.995 availability caps the capacity factor a single unit can achieve and, more importantly, means the guaranteed floor from one machine is not Tier III. The contracted firm floor for a campus is therefore built from the hybrid, whose combined floor is higher than any member's.

So the honest metric for a MetroVolt campus is not the burner's capacity factor alone but the guaranteed floor of the whole system — the number a compute operator can actually build a training schedule around.

• Capacity factor = average; firmness = guaranteed floor
• Burner is steady and weather-independent while running
• Availability gate caps single-unit capacity factor and floor
• Contracted firm floor comes from the hybrid, not one unit