Tennessee AI glossary.
Plain definitions for the utility, permitting and research terms used across the Tennessee register. Each entry is limited to what its cited source states.
10 termsDesk reviewed 2026-11-03
- Power purchase agreement (PPA)
- A contract under which a buyer, such as a utility, agrees to purchase electricity from a specific generator.
- Gen IV reactor
- An advanced nuclear reactor design; Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 is a molten-salt-cooled design described as Gen IV.
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
- The federal power provider that generates and transmits electricity across Tennessee and parts of neighboring states, delivered through local power companies.
- Local power company
- A distributor, such as Memphis Light, Gas and Water, that delivers TVA power to end customers under its own service agreements.
- General services agreement
- A standard utility service contract; MLGW uses the term for its existing service at xAI’s Tulane Road location.
- ELVIS Act
- Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, signed March 21, 2024, which adds voice to the state’s personal-rights protections against AI misuse.
- Exascale computing
- Computing at a scale of at least one quintillion operations per second; ORNL’s Frontier was the lab’s first exascale system.
- AI cluster
- A group of accelerator-equipped servers networked to train and run AI models.
- FIPS county code
- A five-digit federal identifier for a county: the two-digit state code (47 for Tennessee) followed by a three-digit county code.
- Air quality permit
- A permit governing emissions from sources such as on-site generators or turbines; in Memphis and Shelby County, the Shelby County Health Department issues such permits.