Google has contracted 3,590 MW of electricity from Constellation Energy inside PJM, the largest grid in the United States, Reuters reported on 6 October. About a quarter of it is nuclear output that does not exist yet: 890 MW from uprates at 11 of Constellation's reactor units in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, bought under a 20-year power purchase agreement. The other 2,700 MW comes from Constellation's existing plants across PJM on a 15-year contract.
Constellation will invest more than $4.3 billion in the upgrades, and the first uprated plant is expected to deliver extra power in 2028. Next to the power contracts, the two companies agreed a five-year contract for Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise services to Constellation, according to an analysis by TIKR.
Why PJM Is the Backdrop
The timing is not a coincidence. PJM management has proposed that data center customers on its 13-state grid either bring their own power or accept that they can be cut off remotely when demand peaks. Reuters notes that PJM capacity prices have risen more than elevenfold since 2024 as data center demand grew. A long contract with a generator inside the footprint is one way for a large buyer to show that it adds supply instead of only drawing on it.
Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's global head of energy and power, said the company wants to grow responsibly by investing in clean, reliable power. Constellation chief executive Joe Dominguez called the deal a model for how technology and energy companies can work together.
The Standby Plant Gets a Second Job
For anyone running standby generators at a large site in PJM, curtailment is not a theoretical idea. In May, the U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act that allowed PJM to curtail data centers and other large consumers with backup generation as a last resort before rolling blackouts, Utility Dive reported. The order covered three days of unseasonable heat with more than 40 GW of plant out for maintenance.
That changes what a backup plant is asked to do. A generator yard planned and permitted for rare utility failures and monthly tests may be called on by the grid operator on a hot afternoon. Questions follow that are seldom in the original specification: how many run hours the air permit allows outside a real outage, how much fuel is on site and how fast it can be refilled, whether the exhaust aftertreatment is ready for longer runs, and who pays for the extra wear.
An uprated reactor in 2028 does not answer those questions for a campus that is energised next year. Contracts like this one ease the pressure on the grid over time; until then the standby plant covers the gap.
Sources: Reuters via BNN Bloomberg, TIKR, Utility Dive