Practice

Tafel Power provides independent analysis and investment diligence for firm power and large-load infrastructure across ERCOT and other US power markets.

Firm Power and Storage Economics

Investment modeling, offtake economics, valuation, and counterparty assessment for BESS, hybrid gas-plus-storage, and firm-power projects. Work includes opportunity screening, commercial diligence, and investment-committee support.

Particular focus is placed on how interconnection rules, financial security requirements, market structure, fuel access, and time-to-power risk affect transaction value. Representative capabilities:

Reconcile an ISO interconnection queue to the projects that are genuinely signed, near-term, and merchant-contractable, for example filtering ERCOT's 69.7 GW gas queue to an 8.8 GW screened set.
Completion-weight queued capacity to a deliverable estimate from historical build rates, so value rests on what will connect, not on nameplate.
Map counterparty concentration inside a screened set, so a buyer knows how few sellers actually control the contractable supply.
Track turbine and equipment slot availability and lead times that gate an in-service date.

Large-Load Power Strategy

Assessment of power procurement and infrastructure strategy for hyperscale data centers, colocation campuses, and industrial large loads. Work includes interconnection analysis, utility and market pathway evaluation, behind-the-meter and hybrid configurations, financial security requirements, and delivered cost of firm power adjusted for timing and execution risk. Representative capabilities:

Rank candidate markets and sites by the delivered cost of firm power, energy plus capacity, transmission, tariff, and non-bypassable charges, not the headline energy price.
Separate the cost a buyer can manage, through siting, voltage and service class, and contract structure, from the charges it cannot.
Evaluate behind-the-meter and hybrid gas-plus-storage configurations, including permitting, reliability, and time-to-power constraints.
Rank firm options by time-to-power, from existing-fleet offtake and uprates to new gas, fuel cells, geothermal, and nuclear.

Infrastructure Investment and Platform Diligence

Market analysis, commercial diligence, counterparty assessment, platform strategy, and regulatory risk evaluation for institutional investors, strategic buyers, developers, and infrastructure owners evaluating US power generation, storage, and large-load opportunities. Representative capabilities:

Provide an independent deliverability review of a firm-power offtake or platform for an investment committee or lender.
Distinguish captive or dedicated generation from speculative queue positions, using off-queue offtake, permit, and equipment evidence.
Test which announced large loads are real, contracted, and financed, not only which supply is real.
Stress-test completion, peak-cost, and capacity-price assumptions in an investment model.

Representative engagements

The following illustrate the type of work, not specific client engagements.

Site selection for a large load. A hyperscaler or developer asks where to place a 500 MW, 24/7 campus. We rank candidate markets by the delivered cost of firm power, not the headline energy price, accounting for capacity, transmission, tariff, and non-bypassable charges, voltage and service-class options, and realistic time-to-power, then narrow to the two or three sites that can actually be served on schedule.

Firm-power procurement diligence. For a target region and in-service date, we screen the interconnection queue down to the projects that are genuinely signed, near-term, and contractable, map the counterparties that control that set, and pressure-test each position on interconnection status, turbine slot, and fuel access before a term sheet.

Platform and asset diligence. For an infrastructure investor evaluating a gas or storage platform, we underwrite it on completion-weighted, deliverable capacity rather than nameplate, stress the peak-cost and capacity-price assumptions, and separate the contracted, firm value from unbuilt queue position.

Tafel Power is led by Kris Narayanan. See the About page for firm background and market perspective, or the Methodology page for how published research is developed.