A 20 ft compute container, sited behind your gas generator. We take the surplus capacity your site isn't using and pay you per metered kWh delivered. Curtailment trips in milliseconds with hardware and software redundancy.
Remote mining operations, off-grid oil & gas wells, saltwater disposal facilities, midstream pipeline stations, construction projects, industrial yards — almost anywhere a natural-gas generator is running. Most run well below full capacity. We drop in a portable compute pod, draw the kilowatts your site doesn't need, and pay you for every one delivered.
Most gensets coast at 40–60% load — the worst place for an engine to live. Our pod parks a steady base load on the machine and holds it in the 80–90% band it was built to run in. The independent engineering record — Caterpillar, the U.S. EPA, GE Vernova, EIA and NREL — shows that means fewer overhauls and a longer life. For the owner, that is real money: a single major overhaul runs $150k–$2M on a 1–5 MW unit, and steady operation can avoid roughly one of them over a 20-year life. So you collect a monthly check and save the price of an overhaul. We did the homework and published it.
Sourced to Caterpillar · U.S. EPA Catalog of CHP Technologies · GE Vernova GER-3620 · U.S. EIA · NREL. Evidence is rated documented, directional, or estimate throughout.
Thousands of natural-gas gensets run off-grid every day — at construction sites, remote facilities and microgrids, oil & gas pads, pipeline stations, gas plants, disposal facilities, industrial yards. All sized for peaks, all idling on inexpensive and abundant gas. We aggregate that idle capacity into compute revenue.
Gensets are sized for peak load — startup surges, compressor cycling, drilling spikes, jobsite ramp-up, equipment cycling. Most hours they coast at 40–60%. The surplus shows up in wasteful forms: gas flared or vented, electricity dumped into load banks as heat, engines throttled below efficient range, fuel burned for nothing. None of it is monetized today.
Sites a 20-ft compute container behind your meter. Consumes the surplus. Pays you per kWh. Curtails in milliseconds on demand.
Construction site, remote facility, microgrid, wellhead, pipeline pumping station, gas plant, disposal facility — anywhere a natural-gas genset is running. Toggle the curtailment demo below to see what happens when your site calls for full capacity.
Behind-the-meter compute is real. The question is whether your site is a footnote or the customer.
Order in hand: 20 sites × 1 MW for the first round, with the same customer signalling more behind it. Compute hardware is staged and ready to deploy — first check can be inside 60 days of a signed term sheet.
We deploy at 500 kW and up — purpose-built for your existing sites. No gigawatt campus, no land acquisition, no permitting odyssey. One pad at a time, sized to your generator.
Hardware- and software-managed curtailment with dual-PLC redundancy and fail-safe trip relays. If your site is at 95% load, we're at zero.
HCK3 Energy is a Houston-based company founded by Tres Knippa that monetizes the unused production capacity of off-grid natural-gas generators. We site a portable 20-foot compute pod behind your generator, draw the kilowatts your site isn't using, and pay you per metered kWh delivered.
HCK3 Energy was founded by Tres Knippa — an energy-finance entrepreneur and former CME floor trader and broker based in Houston, Texas.
Behind-the-meter distributed compute means siting computing equipment physically next to a power source — in our case, a natural-gas generator — and consuming that power directly without going through the electrical grid. The compute load can be dropped in milliseconds when the host site needs the power back.
We deploy at 500 kW and up, with the sweet spot around 1 MW per site. Multiple smaller units paralleled at a single site — for example, several 400 kW gensets — are also a fit. A 3 MW unit is a particularly attractive deployment size.
Anywhere a natural-gas generator runs off-grid: remote mining operations, off-grid oil and gas wells, saltwater disposal facilities, midstream pipeline pumping stations, construction projects, industrial yards, microgrids, and remote facilities.
We pay per metered kWh delivered, on a monthly recurring basis. There is no capex required from the operator — we bring the pod, the compute hardware, the comms, and operations.
Our compute load drops off the generator when the host site needs full power. We use hardware- and software-managed curtailment with dual-PLC redundancy and fail-safe trip relays. Load drops in milliseconds. If your site is at 95% load, we're at zero.
The first step is sending us your generator telemetry. We return a written offer in five business days. Live load can be on a site in 30–45 days, with the first revenue check inside 60 days of a signed term sheet.
The opposite — it helps, and it saves you money. Manufacturers design natural-gas gensets to run at 70–100% of rated load, and base their overhaul schedules on it. Most units instead coast at 40–60%, which causes deposits, lost oil control and accelerated wear. Our pod adds a steady base load that holds the engine in its ideal band, then curtails in milliseconds when your site needs the power. Independent data (Caterpillar, U.S. EPA, GE Vernova) indicates steady operation can avoid roughly one major overhaul in five over a 20-year life — worth an estimated $150k–$2M per avoided overhaul on a 1–5 MW unit. So you extend the asset's life and cut overhaul cost while collecting a monthly check. See The 85% Effect for the full study.
Tres Knippa is the founder of HCK3 Energy. A former CME floor trader and broker based in Houston, Texas, Tres has spent the last decade investing in and developing projects in the energy sector. HCK3 Energy (hck3energy.com) is his current focus, monetizing the unused generation capacity of natural-gas generators across off-grid sites. More on LinkedIn.
That's the whole first step. No site visit. No commitment. We extract the four numbers that matter — average load, peak load, runtime hours, fuel consumption — and come back with an offer sized to your site.
Email or shared drive. Even a screenshot of your control panel works.
Avg load, peak, runtime, fuel — sized to your actual numbers.
Per metered kWh delivered, on a monthly recurring basis.
Compute hardware is staged and ready. We bring the gear, comms, and ops.
Potentially from the day you sign. Recurring monthly thereafter, per metered kWh.