Power Is Finite. And the Grid Doesn’t Care About Your Schedule.

Early in the project, power felt like a solvable detail rather than a defining constraint. The instinct was to delay full commitment to the utility company in order to avoid early expenditures while other deal components were still in motion. What we failed to fully appreciate was a simple reality of infill development: electric power is not infinite, and capacity in urban grids is constantly being allocated in real time.

In infill environments, available power may not come from the closest point on the map. Capacity constraints often mean service must be sourced from a different segment of the grid, sometimes far from the site itself. In our case, while we delayed, the utility provider committed the nearby available power to another project. When we finally re-engaged, the answer was clear and non-negotiable. To serve our project, we would need to trench approximately half a mile down a major road, at a cost of roughly $1.5M, none of which had been contemplated in the original proforma.

There was no appeal process that mattered. No workaround that saved meaningful time or money. This was simply how the grid worked.

The lesson here extends beyond “commit early.” It’s about understanding how utilities think and operate. Early conversations with the electric and gas companies are essential to confirm not just theoretical service, but actual available capacity. Even more critical is engaging a local, experienced third-party utility consultant who speaks the utility’s language, understands their internal processes, and knows how to secure commitments before capacity disappears. On infill sites especially, utilities should be treated as a first-order design and entitlement constraint, not a downstream technical task. Waiting doesn’t preserve flexibility. It often eliminates it.