By Laila Kearney
NEW YORK, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Google has contracted for 3,590 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy in the US’ largest power grid, with new nuclear energy accounting for about a quarter of that supply, the companies said on Tuesday.
The deal will enable more than $4.3 billion of new investment by Constellation and involves adding capacity at several of the power company’s nuclear reactors in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, the companies said.
Major tech companies are racing to secure massive amounts of electricity supplies to power data centers across the US by striking unprecedented deals with the country’s power companies.
Over the last two years, Constellation unveiled an agreement to restart its Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania to serve Microsoft data centers, while Google contracted to restart NextEra Energy’s nuclear power plant in Iowa.
In the latest arrangement, Google entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement for 890 megawatts of electricity from multiple Constellation-owned nuclear power plants, which would be upgraded to produce more electricity from existing reactors.
Electricity from the first of the upgraded plants is expected to be delivered in 2028, the companies said.
Google also entered into a long-term supply agreement for an additional 2,700 megawatts of power from Constellation in PJM. That power is not tied to a specific generation source and serves as long-term revenue certainty for Constellation’s operating plants, Google said.
Maryland-based Constellation is the largest US nuclear power plant operator and owns a major fleet of natural-gas-fired power plants.
“We’re committed to meeting our growth responsibly by actively investing in clean, reliable power that brings new capacity to our nation’s grids,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of energy and power, in a statement.
The 11 nuclear units expected to be upgraded as part of the arrangement with Google are in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, within the footprint of the largest US electric grid – PJM Interconnection.
PJM management has proposed requiring data center customers connected to the 13-state grid to either bring their own power or face being shut off from grid power remotely in times of peak demand.
The deal between Google and Constellation is in response to PJM’s “bring your own power” proposal, the companies said.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
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