Methodology

This page describes the verification protocol applied to every record in Verified Atlas: how sources are ranked, what counts as an admissible citation, how conflicting claims are handled, the distinctions this atlas draws between announced, contracted and energized activity, and how records are versioned. It is the reference document behind every cell on the rest of the site. It is not the lead, and nothing on the site asks you to read it before you can read a fact.

Source hierarchy

Not every source carries the same weight. When a record is built, its sources are ranked in this order, and its review status reflects how far up this hierarchy they reach.

1. Primary legal text. The statute, bill, docket order or filed tariff sheet itself.
2. Primary regulatory record. Docket sheets, position statements and other filings entered into the official case record of the relevant agency.
3. Primary statements from a named party. A direct quotation attributed to a specific company, official or organization, treated as evidence of what that party said, not as an independently verified fact.
4. Secondary reporting. News coverage of a primary event, used chiefly to source direct quotes from parties that are not otherwise in the written record.
5. Independent trackers and advocacy sources. Recorded as labeled claims with the claimant identified, never folded into verified facts unless independently confirmed against a primary source.

Review vocabulary

A record's review state is one of three values, and the site prints it next to the datum rather than in a banner.

• two-reviewer a second reviewer checked the record against primary sources and found no open disagreement.
• single-reviewer one careful reviewer built the record from the sources above, and no second reviewer has re-read it. It does not mean the record is doubted. It means one pair of eyes, not two.
• disputed two or more admissible sources disagree on a material fact and re-reading the primary document did not settle it.

Across the 57 instrument records in the snapshot behind this page, 44 carry two-reviewer status and 13 carry single-reviewer. 0 carry disputed.

The exact quote and pinpoint requirement

Every source row carries four required fields: the exact url of the source document, the source's own title as published, a pinpoint naming the page, section, paragraph or sheet where the supporting text appears, and the quote itself, copied verbatim rather than paraphrased. A fact does not enter this atlas without all four. All 1036 source rows in this snapshot carry both a quote and a pinpoint, and that is checked at build time.

The pinpoint is what makes a citation checkable in under a minute. You should be able to open the URL, go to the page or paragraph named, and find the quoted language there.

The conflicting-claims rule, worked

When two admissible sources describing the same fact disagree, this atlas does not average them, silently prefer the more recent one, or silently prefer the more official-looking one. Two steps apply, in order.

Step one: re-read the primary document

Most apparent conflicts in a long regulatory filing turn out to be extraction artifacts, where two passes captured two different sections and reported them as competing numbers. The worked example is the Ameren exit-notice question, and it is the reason this section exists.

Earlier records carried a 36-month figure from the Commission's order and a 24-month figure from the filed tariff sheet, and the pair was recorded as a conflict. Re-reading the full Stipulation and Agreement attached to the order showed that the two figures come from two separate, separately-headed provisions.

“Sec. 8: "...unless either party to the LLCS Service Agreement provides at least thirty-six (36) months’ written notice to the other party prior to the end of the Term or any Extension Term of its intent not to renew the LLCS Service Agreement, or of its intent to renew the LLCS Service Agreement for the Extension Term at a reduced Contract Capacity." Sec. 12: "In order to terminate before the end of the Term or any Extension Term, the customer must deliver a written notice (a ‘Termination Notice’) to Ameren Missouri not less than twenty-four (24) months prior to the effective date of the termination specified in the Termination Notice ... An additional fee shall apply if the customer seeks to terminate with less than twenty-four (24)-months’ notice (the ‘Early Termination Fee’). In such case, the Early Termination Fee shall be equal to two (2) times the nominal value of the applicable Minimum Monthly Bill times the number of months less than the twenty-four (24)-months’ notice required for termination."”

Stipulation and Agreement Exhibit, PDF pp. 11 & 14 of 113 (internal Exhibit pages 4 & 7): Sec. 8 "Service Term" and Sec. 12 "Termination of LLCS Service Agreement"
https://efis.psc.mo.gov/Document/Display/858399

Section 8 sets a 36-month notice to avoid automatic renewal into an Extension Term. Section 12 sets the termination path and its Exit Fee.

“If a customer terminates its service under its LLCS Service Agreement pursuant to this Paragraph 12 during the ramp period, the Customer shall pay to Ameren Missouri an Exit Fee in an amount equal to the applicable Minimum Monthly Bill multiplied by the number of months in the remaining term of the load ramp period plus sixty (60) calendar months. If the customer terminates its service under its LLCS Service Agreement pursuant to this Paragraph 12 after the ramp period, the customer shall pay to Ameren Missouri an “Exit Fee” in an amount equal to the applicable Minimum Monthly Bill multiplied by the lesser of (x) a period of sixty (60) calendar months or (y) the number of months in remaining Term or Extension Term (such lesser period, the “Termination Fee Period”).”

Stipulation and Agreement Exhibit ¶12 (Termination of LLCS Service Agreement), PDF p.14 of 113
https://efis.psc.mo.gov/Document/Display/858399

The filed tariff sheet restates both. Nothing was in conflict. The record was flagged disputed while the question was open, and it moved to two-reviewer status only after the re-read, with both provisions written into its exit-terms field rather than one figure chosen over the other. Here is that field as it stands today, verbatim from the record:

Two distinct notice provisions per the Stipulation and Agreement, Case ET-2025-0184: Sec. 8 requires 36 months' notice to avoid automatic renewal into a 5-year Extension Term; Sec. 12 requires 24 months' notice to terminate service. Exit Fee = the applicable Minimum Monthly Bill multiplied by the LESSER of 60 calendar months or the months remaining in the Term/Extension Term (during the ramp period: the remaining ramp months PLUS 60 calendar months). Early Termination Fee = two times the Minimum Monthly Bill times the number of months by which notice falls short of 24 months. The 60-month cap is the material difference from Evergy's LLPS, whose Exit Fee runs the full remaining Term with a 12-month floor and no cap.

mo-ameren-llrp-et-2025-0184

When a re-read settles a question this way, the resolution is published with every provision quoted and pinpointed, so you can check the reasoning rather than take the resolution on faith.

Step two: where a re-read does not settle it, preserve both

If the sources genuinely disagree, both readings are shown, each with its own quote, pinpoint and source URL, and the record is flagged disputed. A related case is kept visible rather than smoothed over: the Missouri PSC's own general summary page for large-load tariffs states a single 24-month exit-notice figure.

“Exit and Early Termination Fees. Large-load customers may terminate or change rate schedules before the end of the contract term if written notice is provided at least 24 months prior to the requested change taking effect. In those instances, the customer will be subject to an exit fee. If requesting to terminate with less than 24 months' notice, the customer is also subject to an early termination fee.”

main body text
https://psc.mo.gov/General/Utility_Tariffs_for_Large_Load_Customers

Against Ameren's order that is a fair, compressed summary of one of two provisions. Against Evergy's order, which states a single 36-month notice, no matching 24-month provision was located. That summary-page figure stays in the dataset as a real quotation from a real page, and it is not treated as authoritative for either utility's terms.

Characterizations never exceed the row

Short labels on this site are generated, and each one is checked at build time against a substring of the text it summarizes. Three consequences you can see on the pages:

• Collateral is never normalized into a single column. A dollar per megawatt, a percentage of full-term minimum charges, a multiple of a maximum monthly non-fuel bill and a two-year transmission-demand deposit are four different measurements, and a column that averaged them would be a false comparison. Each cell carries its own formula.
• A conditional number renders its condition in the cell, not in a footnote. Where a collateral requirement applies only to a customer that fails both a credit-rating test and a liquidity test, the cell says so, because the condition is the finding.
• Silence in a record is rendered as silence. Where a tariff contains no exit-fee clause, the cell reads that no exit provision is recorded in the collected sheets. It does not read that no fee is owed. Those are different statements and only one of them is supported.

Announced, contracted, energized

Coverage of this industry routinely blurs three distinct stages, and this atlas keeps them apart wherever the underlying data supports it. Announced means a developer, government body or utility has publicly stated an intention or a figure. It is not evidence that permits are approved, that a contract is signed, or that construction has begun. Contracted or permitted means a binding agreement exists: a signed electric service agreement, an approved tariff schedule, a rezoning, a permit. It is not evidence that the facility is built or operating, and contracted capacity can be confidential and not tied to a named public facility. Energized means the facility is drawing power. Where a source blends these, the record notes the distinction rather than passing the blended figure through as fact.

Versioning, and its current limit

Every record carries created and updated timestamps, and every published page carries the date of the snapshot it was generated from. Stated plainly: that is a change flag, not a diff. There is no version table behind this corpus yet, so the atlas cannot today answer what a tariff required on the day your client signed. That is the most valuable thing we cannot do, we know it, and the pricing page says so rather than selling around it.

One further consequence worth stating: the collectors that populate this dataset run on their own schedule, and a re-run can reintroduce a record that a review pass had merged or retired. Two safeguards apply. Review decisions are written back into the collector files, not only into the database, so a re-run converges on the reviewed state instead of reverting it. And the loader matches each incoming source row against the rows already stored, by document URL, exact quote and the record it attaches to, so a re-run adds nothing it has already loaded.

License

Verified Atlas is free to cite with attribution, on every tier including the free one. Quote it, link it, build on it, and name Verified Atlas when you do.