Google Buys 890 MW of Nuclear Uprates on a Strained Grid

Google signed a 20-year deal on October 6, 2026, for 890 megawatts of extra nuclear power from 11 existing reactors on the PJM grid. The uprates are the clean slice of a much larger package.

A second, 15-year contract covers 2,700 MW from plants Constellation Energy already runs, and it landed a week after federal regulators stalled PJM’s plan to buy emergency capacity for data centers.

Google Locked 3,590 MW Across Two Contracts

The companies described a “long-term strategic clean energy collaboration” that adds 890 MW of new nuclear output by raising thermal and electrical efficiency at 11 Constellation-owned units in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Constellation is putting up more than $4.3 billion of investment for new equipment at those sites, and it said the extra power is new supply for the whole PJM footprint, not a private line into a Google campus.

Together the two contracts total 3,590 MW. Only about a quarter of that figure is new generation. The rest is a 15-year energy supply agreement meant to keep Constellation’s operating assets “economically viable” so they stay on the grid.

HOW THE 3,590 MW BREAKS APART

Amazon’s 190 MW add is a separate Maryland project. Stacked with Google’s 890 MW, Constellation sold almost 1.1 GW of nuclear expansions in a week, all of it from plants that already have sites, licenses, and grid connections.

More nuclear energy is coming to PJM. Our agreement with @Google will add 890 MW of reliable, emissions-free capacity – equivalent to a new reactor – backed by $4.3B+ in private investment. Deal will also sustain and create thousands of jobs. More info ↙️ https://t.co/6cf4KDpv9E pic.twitter.com/qHGcfmKPTO

— Constellation (@ConstellationEG) October 6, 2026

Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of data center energy, said the company is “committed to meeting our growth responsibly by actively investing in clean, reliable power that brings new capacity to our nation’s grids.” She added that the uprate deal “will strengthen the PJM grid, which serves 67 million people, all while protecting energy affordability and supporting local union jobs.”

Bring Your Own Power Is Now a Signed Contract

Constellation called the package “a direct response to PJM’s ‘Bring Your Own Power’ proposal,” a model in which a big user funds new supply instead of waiting for the grid operator to procure it for everyone. The companies also said the structure lines up with the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge, Google’s public line that its growth should not raise bills for other customers.

That pitch is easier to make after PJM’s own procurement stalled. The grid operator, which runs the largest U.S. power market across 13 states and the District of Columbia, has been trying to close a shortfall of about 6.8 GW tied to data-center load. It designed a one-time reliability backstop auction to buy new capacity. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on September 29, 2026, rejected pieces of that plan and told PJM to rewrite it. PJM suspended the auction the next day.

THE WEEK THE PUBLIC AUCTION GAVE WAY TO PRIVATE DEALS

1. January 2026: The Trump administration and governors from PJM states call for an emergency-style procurement to back new plants with long-term contracts.
2. September 29, 2026: FERC blocks key parts of PJM’s backstop auction and asks for stronger customer protections.
3. September 30, 2026: PJM suspends the auction. The same day, Constellation announces a 20-year Amazon deal that adds 190 MW at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland.
4. October 6, 2026: Google and Constellation sign the 890 MW uprate deal and the 2,700 MW supply contract.

A private 20-year offtake does the job the delayed auction was supposed to do for one customer: it gives a generator the revenue to spend capital, and it gives a data-center operator a story about bringing its own power. The megawatts still arrive on the shared PJM system, which is the point of an uprate, and also the political problem, because every large load on that system shows up in capacity prices paid by everyone else.

PJM’s independent market monitor has said existing and forecast data-center load made up 9 percent of wholesale costs through July 2026, and that data-center load growth added $29.4 billion in capacity-market revenues across the last four auctions. Electricity rates in New Jersey, one of the three states in the Google uprate map, have climbed 54 percent over five years.

What an Uprate Adds to an Old Reactor

An uprate is not a new plant. Constellation will modernize turbines, steam generators, and digital control systems so 11 operating units make more electricity from the same sites. Google said that work “is happening years quicker than building one from the ground up,” and that the 890 MW is “roughly the equivalent to adding an entirely new large reactor.”

THE HARDWARE THIS DEAL ACTUALLY PAYS FOR

• Turbines: New or rebuilt machines convert more of the plant’s steam into electricity without a new reactor core.
• Steam generators: Upgraded equipment raises thermal efficiency, which is how more megawatts come out of a licensed unit.
• Digital controls: New instrumentation and software support the higher output and, in this deal, sit next to Google Cloud tools Constellation is installing.

U.S. operators have been doing this since the 1970s. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had approved 171 uprates totaling 8,030 megawatts as of January 2022, about as much as eight new reactors, without pouring a new containment building. Google noted that 94 reactors still run in the United States and that nuclear supplies nearly 20 percent of U.S. electricity. The fastest extra megawatt, in that telling, is the one hiding in a plant that already has a switchyard.

Constellation said the Google work also advances the federal UPRISE program for existing plants, the Energy Department effort to pull more output from the legacy fleet. The department’s separate goal is 5 GW of U.S. nuclear expansion by 2030 through uprates and restarts. Google said its agreements to revive existing plants should cover nearly 25 percent of that target by the end of the decade.

Under a five-year technology alliance, Constellation will put Gemini Enterprise workflows into site selection, power-flow modeling, outage planning, and the security of air-gapped operational networks. The software is the sweetener. The physics is still steel in the turbine hall.

Eleven Reactors Across Three States

The companies did not name the six plants. They said the 11 units sit in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, all inside PJM, the same market that includes Loudoun County, Virginia, the country’s densest data-center cluster. The first uprate is due in 2028. Google said the full 890 MW should be on the system before the end of 2032.

WHAT CONSTELLATION SAYS THE WORK SUPPORTS

• Existing jobs: About 4,400 operations, maintenance, and engineering roles kept at the six sites.
• Construction jobs: About 7,200 temporary posts during the upgrade window.
• Private capital: More than $4.3 billion from Constellation, not from a state mandate or a PJM surcharge written for this project.
• Delivery window: First extra output in 2028, full 890 MW before the end of 2032.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill welcomed investments “at nuclear plants right here in New Jersey” and said the partnership can help meet demand, create jobs, and keep costs off ratepayers. She did not name the New Jersey units either. Constellation’s own project list at the NRC has treated several of its coming uprate filings as proprietary, which is why the map in the press release stops at three state names.

The Bigger Contract Pays Plants Already Running

The 2,700 MW agreement is the volume in the package, and it is easy to misread. It is not 2,700 MW of new reactors. Constellation said the 15-year structure “ensures that Constellation’s operating generation assets continue to deliver energy and capacity to the PJM market.” The press release does not tag those megawatts to nuclear only, and it does not name plants.

What Constellation actually owns is still mostly nuclear, with a gas-and-oil remainder that matters for anyone treating this as a climate story. In 2025, nuclear was 70 percent of Constellation’s generating capacity, gas and oil were 22 percent, and renewables and storage were 8 percent, on 31,676 MW of owned capacity. Because the nuclear fleet runs so hard, it produced 89 percent of the company’s electricity that year, with gas and oil at 8 percent and renewables at 3 percent.

CONSTELLATION’S 2025 OWNED MIX

A 15-year check on 2,700 MW is, for a merchant generator, a way to turn open-market sales into contracted revenue. Extra output from an uprate is useful. A long contract on plants that already run can be the piece that changes how investors value the fleet. The nuclear headline is 890 MW. The balance-sheet headline is that Google also agreed to keep paying for a much larger block of power that is already there.

Joe Dominguez, Constellation’s chairman, president, and CEO, put the public case in grid-wide terms.

Preserving and expanding the output of the existing nuclear fleet and developing new clean generation is critical to meeting our nation’s growing energy needs while keeping costs affordable for homes and businesses. This long-term clean energy collaboration with Google can serve as a model for how technology companies and the energy industry can work together to responsibly develop the digital economy and invest in our nation’s energy infrastructure in a way that delivers grid-wide benefits for all, funded by private entities.

Joe Dominguez, chairman, president and CEO, Constellation Energy

Household Bills Are the Fight This Deal Claims to Dodge

Google’s blog on the deal says other grid customers “bear none of the associated costs” of the uprates, and that the 890 MW will “strengthen U.S. grids at no cost to other ratepayers.” The companies also built in demand flexibility, so Google can cut non-critical load during high-stress hours. That is the Bring Your Own Power bargain in one clause: fund extra firm supply, and be willing to drop load when the system is tight.

The claim is about this project’s capital, not about the last four PJM capacity auctions. Those already capitalized a data-center boom that the market monitor has priced in the tens of billions of dollars. A 20-year Google offtake can keep an uprate off the retail rate base and still leave household bills exposed to the wider shortage that made the offtake necessary. Those two facts can both be true, and they describe different bills.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Signed terms: 890 MW of uprates on a 20-year deal, plus 2,700 MW of existing supply on a 15-year deal.
• Money and jobs: More than $4.3 billion from Constellation, about 4,400 jobs kept, about 7,200 construction jobs.
• Schedule: First extra output in 2028, full 890 MW before the end of 2032.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The six plants: The 11 units have not been named publicly.
• The price: Neither contract discloses what Google will pay per megawatt-hour.
• The 2,700 MW fuel split: The supply deal is not tagged to nuclear, gas, or renewables in the announcement.

Google needs the power. In 2025 its electricity demand rose 37 percent, the largest annual jump it has reported, while operational emissions fell 2 percent and supply-chain emissions rose 25 percent, according to the company’s 2026 environmental report. Kate Brandt, Google’s chief sustainability officer, wrote that the AI buildout “is currently accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing.” Matching that load with purchased renewables is not the same as adding 890 MW of 24-hour nuclear in the one U.S. grid that already cannot clear enough capacity for the 2028/29 year.

The Extra Megawatts Arrive in 2028

With this Constellation pact, Google said it has now enabled over 1.5 GW of new nuclear in the United States from uprates and restarts. That total includes a Georgia Power agreement covering four reactor units that Google said should produce about $900 million in ratepayer benefits, and a plan with NextEra Energy to restart Iowa’s Duane Arnold plant for more than 600 MW. The Constellation slice is the one sitting on PJM, where the auction that was supposed to police large loads still has no new date.

The first extra megawatts from the 11 reactors are due in 2028. The last of the 890 MW is due before the end of 2032. Until then, the contract that actually moves this year is the 2,700 MW of power Constellation already knows how to generate.