The Counterparty Problem
The 2026 SSG/DCI Pulse Check confirms what experienced directors already suspect. The top three elimination factors in site selection are utility/infrastructure capacity (61%), available suitable site (53%), and workforce availability (51%). State and local incentives eliminate at 2%.
Look at who controls each of those. The utility controls power capacity. The POTW controls discharge acceptance. The landowner controls site access and remediation status. The community college controls program commitments. The EDO controls incentives, which barely register as a first-cut filter. Every answer that actually determines whether a city survives screening belongs to a counterparty.
RFI response windows run one to two weeks. Sometimes 48 hours for initial site identification. That timeline does not accommodate discovering which answers require a utility load study, which need a POTW pretreatment determination, which demand a council vote. Those answer categories have to be mapped and pre-cleared before the RFI exists.
Tier-3 cities hold a real advantage here. Direct relationships with every counterparty in town. A director who has already pre-cleared answer classes with the utility engineer, the POTW superintendent, and the community college dean can produce an authorized, bounded, forwardable response while a larger metro is still routing the request through its approval chain. The advantage is speed to a formal answer, and it compounds with preparation. Informality alone produces nothing a site selector can put in a file.
The features that follow this piece take it dimension by dimension.
Screening Question Teardown — "What Is the Available Power Capacity at This Site?"
The screening question about available power capacity is addressed to the utility, not the EDO. The passing answer is a signed utility document: MW at the delivery point, voltage, service configuration, study path, cost responsibility, energization timeline, validity period. Most tier-3 cities respond with "ample capacity nearby." That phrase cannot populate a cell in a comparison matrix. The city gets eliminated not because it lacks power but because it cannot prove power in a format the evaluator's engineering team can use. This piece specifies what that document must contain and why it needs to exist before the RFI arrives.
Screening Question Teardown — "What Is the Available Power Capacity at This Site?"
The screening question about available power capacity is addressed to the utility, not the EDO. The passing answer is a signed utility document: MW at the delivery point, voltage, service configuration, study path, cost responsibility, energization timeline, validity period. Most tier-3 cities respond with "ample capacity nearby." That phrase cannot populate a cell in a comparison matrix. The city gets eliminated not because it lacks power but because it cannot prove power in a format the evaluator's engineering team can use. This piece specifies what that document must contain and why it needs to exist before the RFI arrives.
Map the Counterparties Before the RFI Arrives
An RFI response requires electricity capacity data from the utility, wastewater loading from the POTW, workforce completions from the community college, site specs from the landowner. Eight independent counterparties control the answers. None report to the ED director. Most have never been asked what they will put in writing before a named prospect exists. The response window runs one to two weeks. The pre-alignment work has to be done before the RFI shows up. This is the counterparty map, with the specific ask for each.
Map the Counterparties Before the RFI Arrives
An RFI response requires electricity capacity data from the utility, wastewater loading from the POTW, workforce completions from the community college, site specs from the landowner. Eight independent counterparties control the answers. None report to the ED director. Most have never been asked what they will put in writing before a named prospect exists. The response window runs one to two weeks. The pre-alignment work has to be done before the RFI shows up. This is the counterparty map, with the specific ask for each.
What the Utility Hears When You Ask for Capacity
Thirteen of 23 NERC assessment areas face resource adequacy challenges. FERC's June 2026 show-cause orders put every RTO on notice to justify its large-load tariff provisions or propose changes. The utility planning team serving your sites is operating under constraints that did not exist 18 months ago. Those constraints govern what they can put in writing before a prospect triggers a formal study. This piece walks the study sequence from the utility's side, using AEP Ohio's and PGE's published processes as named examples: what each stage costs, what information it requires, and where the pre-prospect ceiling sits.
What Your POTW Cannot Accept Is Your Best Sector-Targeting Data
Your POTW's local limits schedule contains numeric thresholds for metals, BOD, FOG, and pH that govern which wet-process manufacturers can physically discharge in your jurisdiction. Most EDOs have never compiled those numbers into a document a site selector's environmental consultant can evaluate without making a phone call. The gap works the same way utility-capacity documentation gaps work: the city has more infrastructure than it can prove, and the proof failure registers as a screening elimination. The pretreatment coordinator holds the data. The most actionable output is not remaining capacity. It is what the plant cannot accept, because that sorts your sector targets before you spend pursuit resources on prospects whose discharge will never comply.
The Workforce Commitment Your Community College Cannot Yet Make — And The One It Can
"We'll train your workforce" appears in every RFP response site selectors receive. The claim survives screening only when it names a program, specifies a cohort size, states a first completion date, and carries a signature from someone authorized to commit institutional resources. Most EDO directors have never asked their community college to produce that artifact. They do not know what it contains, and they do not know which fields the college can authorize before a prospect exists. This piece covers the evidence standard field by field and treats the college relationship as what it operationally is: a structured negotiation with an independently governed counterparty whose constraints the EDO director must understand before the deal clock starts.
The Landowner Is the Gate
Site selectors screen files, not parcels. The first variable they check is whether the EDO controls the land. A parcel without a signed commitment from the owner is not a site. It is an unresolved question with acreage. Four state certified-site programs specify exactly what that commitment looks like, and their checklists draw a clean line between what an EDO can compile on its own and what requires the landowner's authorization, access, or money. Most tier-3 cities have deferred the landowner conversation. The file makes that visible at first cut.