Google Buys 3,590 Megawatts From Constellation, and 890 of Them Are New Nuclear

Google signed two power contracts with Constellation Energy on Oct. 6, 2026, covering 3,590 megawatts on the grid run by PJM Interconnection, the largest in the United States ¹³. Only 890 of those megawatts are new. They come from a 20-year deal that pays for upgrades at 11 Constellation reactors, with the first due by 2028 ¹. The other 2,700 come from a 15-year agreement for plants already running ¹.

Put plainly, Google is paying to pull one large reactor's worth of extra power out of nuclear plants that already stand in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey ¹². That matters to anyone with a power bill in PJM, where data center demand helped push capacity prices up more than elevenfold since 2024 ³⁴. The worry sits in the same announcement. About three quarters of the 3,590 megawatts is output the grid already had ³⁴.

So which number belongs on a ledger of the AI buildout, 3,590 or 890? The answer is 890, and those megawatts arrive between 2028 and the end of 2032 ¹²⁷.

What did Google and Constellation sign on Oct. 6?

Constellation's release lists three deals: a power purchase, a supply contract and a cloud contract ¹.

• Power purchase: Google buys 890 megawatts from upgrades at 11 Constellation reactors for 20 years, and Constellation invests more than $4.3 billion ¹.
• Supply contract: a separate 15-year agreement covers 2,700 megawatts from Constellation's fleet in PJM ¹.
• Cloud contract: Constellation expands a five-year deal for Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise, Google's AI software for businesses ¹⁵.

An uprate is a set of upgrades that lets a running reactor make more electricity. Constellation will modernize turbines, steam generators and digital control systems, and its release calls the added capacity "entirely new" ¹. Limerick, the two-reactor plant in Pottstown, Pa., shows the scale at one site. It gains 348 megawatts and Salem in South Jersey gains 97, according to figures Constellation gave The Philadelphia Inquirer ⁷. Limerick can already produce up to 2,317 megawatts, enough for the equivalent of more than 1.7 million homes, by Constellation's count ⁷.

Which plants are in the deal? Constellation's release names three states and six sites and leaves the plants unnamed ¹. Constellation spokesman Paul Dempsey gave the list to Nuclear News, the American Nuclear Society's news service: Braidwood, Byron, LaSalle and Quad Cities in Illinois, Limerick in Pennsylvania and Salem in New Jersey ⁶. The Inquirer's figures confirm two of the six, and the other four rest on that one interview, which POWER cites and mgrid repeats ⁵⁷⁸. Those six sites hold 12 reactors, and Constellation has yet to say which one sits outside the deal ⁵⁸.

Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's global head of energy and power, framed the contract around the grid. "Our agreement with Constellation to fund nuclear reactor uprates will strengthen the PJM grid, which serves 67 million people, all while protecting energy affordability and supporting local union jobs," she said ¹. Her verb is "fund," yet the dollar figure belongs to Constellation. The release credits the $4.3 billion to Constellation, Google's blog calls its own role "financing," and a Google spokesperson declined to tell the Inquirer how much Google spent ¹²⁷.

Construction jobs carry the human side. The companies put the count at about 7,200 construction jobs, with 4,400 existing jobs sustained ¹. "The planned upgrades for Limerick are good news for Pennsylvania's workers and communities," said Robert Bair, president of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council ⁷.

Google pays for 890 new megawatts on a grid 6,831 megawatts short

PJM's own numbers set the scale. Its July auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year came up 6,831 megawatts short of its reliability requirement ¹¹. That same auction cleared only 525 megawatts of new generation and uprates, counted in accredited megawatts, a unit that discounts each plant for its odds of running at peak ¹¹. On Sept. 29, FERC suspended PJM's backstop auction for that gap to Feb. 28, 2027, a step this ledger recorded in FERC Suspends PJM's 6,831-Megawatt Data-Center Power Auction for Five Months ⁵.

Set Google's contract beside those figures. Its 890 new megawatts are 1.7 times what PJM's July auction drew, and about 13 percent of the shortfall ¹¹¹. Speed is the argument for uprates. Constellation's release says they add capacity "without the multi-year timelines or interconnection bottlenecks associated with greenfield construction," meaning the years a new plant waits for a grid connection ¹.

Corio made the same point on Google's blog. "As electricity demand grows in the U.S., the fastest new megawatt is often the one that can be provided by existing infrastructure," she wrote ². Google says this deal lifts the new nuclear capacity it has enabled through uprates and restarts past 1.5 gigawatts, or 1,500 megawatts ².

Joe Dominguez, Constellation's chairman, president and chief executive, made the case for the model. "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," Dominguez said ¹. Read the order of his verbs. He puts "preserving" first, and it describes the 2,700 megawatts. His "expanding" comes second, and it describes the 890.

Why does a nuclear contract belong on a ledger of the superintelligence buildout? The energy component asks whether the power behind AI campuses is contracted, connected and generating. Google's data centers in Ohio and Virginia sit inside PJM, a Google spokesperson told the Inquirer, and the release calls the deal Google's way to bring new capacity to PJM for its growth ¹⁷.

Google's 890 new megawatts beside PJM's 525 cleared and 6,831 short

Compared

The data3 rows · sources

Unit: megawatts

Item	Value	Source
PJM July auction new supply cleared	525	[11]
Google uprates contracted Oct. 6	890	[1]
PJM shortfall 2028/2029 year	6831	[11] [5]

Three quarters of the 3,590 megawatts already flow into PJM

Constellation Energy describes the 2,700 megawatts in its own words. "This financial structure ensures that Constellation's operating generation assets continue to deliver energy and capacity to the PJM market," the release says ¹. Operating assets means plants already running.

Victor Maslow, writing in Martin Cid Magazine on Oct. 7, made the strongest case that the headline overstates the deal. "The 2,700 megawatts in the second contract, which runs 15 years, are not tied to any plant and add no capacity; they lock in output that already exists and give Constellation revenue certainty rather than giving the grid more supply," Maslow wrote ⁴. His phrase "revenue certainty" is Constellation's own heading for that contract ¹.

Marin Holt, managing editor of the trade site mgrid, put the arithmetic in one sentence. "The 2,700 MW piece is a 15-year contract for output that already flows into PJM, so it moves who buys the power rather than how much exists," Holt wrote ⁸. That concession shrinks the step and keeps its direction. Fifteen years of revenue keeps running plants open, which helps reliability, and it adds 0.0 new megawatts against PJM's gap.

PJM Interconnection's pending rule draws the same line. On Aug. 13, PJM asked FERC to let new data centers of 50 megawatts or more bring their own new supply or accept cuts in grid emergencies from June 1, 2027 ⁵¹². "Allowing existing Capacity Resources to contract with New Large Loads would not solve the problem that the BYONC scheme is designed to address," PJM told FERC on Sept. 23 ¹². Under PJM's draft, the uprates could count if they raise each unit's rated capacity and its rights to the grid, and the companies have yet to say whether they will register them that way ⁵.

Google's split matches two earlier Constellation uprate contracts. Walmart's June 23 contract carries 30 new megawatts inside 176, and Amazon's Sept. 30 contract carries 190 new megawatts inside 690 ⁹¹⁰. Across the three deals, 1,110 of 4,456 megawatts are new, about one in four. Both companies also kept the contract price private, mgrid reported ⁸.

New uprates are 17 to 28 percent of three Constellation nuclear contracts

The mix

The data3 rows · sources

Unit: megawatts; share is the segment's percent of the period's total

Period	New uprate capacity	Existing output	Source
Walmart June 23, 176 MW	30 17%	146 83%	[10]
Amazon Sept. 30, 690 MW	190 28%	500 72%	[9]
Google Oct. 6, 3,590 MW	890 25%	2700 75%	[1] [3]

When do the 890 megawatts reach the grid?

Contracted megawatts carry a signing date, and energized megawatts carry a delivery date. For this deal, the two dates sit about six years apart. The ledger keeps three fields, each with its own date:

• Contracted, Oct. 6, 2026: 890 new megawatts for 20 years and 2,700 existing megawatts for 15 years ¹.
• Energized: the 2,700 megawatts generate today, and the first uprate is due by 2028 ¹.
• Planned: all 890 new megawatts before the end of 2032, by Google's account ².

Maslow flagged the calendar too. "Even the new nuclear arrives slowly, and each uprate needs a licence amendment from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," he wrote ⁴. POWER counted 12 Constellation uprate filings on the commission's list of expected applications, running from late 2026 through 2030 ⁵.

Ownership adds a second calendar. PSEG operates Salem and owns 57 percent of it, and Constellation holds 75 percent of Quad Cities ⁵⁸. mgrid noted that the announcement leaves the partners' share of the bill unstated ⁸. PJM's timing runs ahead of the work, too: its curtailment rule for data centers could start June 1, 2027, ahead of the first uprate's 2028 due date ⁵¹².

What Google and Constellation agreed on Oct. 6, and what still lies ahead

The record

The data9 rows · sources

Column	Item	Source
Agreed Oct. 6, 2026	20-year purchase of 890 megawatts from uprates at 11 reactors	[1]
Agreed Oct. 6, 2026	15-year supply deal for 2,700 megawatts from plants already running	[1]
Agreed Oct. 6, 2026	More than $4.3 billion of new investment by Constellation	[1]
Agreed Oct. 6, 2026	Five-year Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise contract	[1]
Still ahead or private	First uprate due by 2028, all 890 megawatts before the end of 2032	[1] [2]
Still ahead or private	An NRC license amendment for each uprate	[4] [8]
Still ahead or private	Which of the six sites' 12 reactors sits outside the deal	[5] [8]
Still ahead or private	The contract price	[8]
Still ahead or private	FERC's ruling on PJM's bring-your-own-capacity rule	[5] [12]

Where this sits on the ledger

Energy moves up 0.3 at reported confidence, the floor of the 0.3 to 0.8 band. The evidence is two companies' announcements of contracts they signed. A regulator's order, a securities filing or a reactor running at higher power would count as confirmed, and each of those still lies ahead.

Four facts hold the step at the floor:

• Share: 2,700 of the 3,590 megawatts is existing output, which adds 0.0 to new supply ¹.
• Timing: the first uprate is due by 2028 and the last before the end of 2032 ¹².
• Approval: every uprate needs an NRC license amendment, and the plant-by-plant split stays unpublished ⁴⁵⁸.
• Scale: 890 megawatts covers about 13 percent of PJM's 6,831-megawatt shortfall ¹¹.

Why move up at all? The 890 megawatts of new nuclear capacity now have Google as a 20-year buyer and more than $4.3 billion of planned investment, in the grid where FERC's Sept. 29 order pulled energy down 0.8 ¹⁵. On its own, this piece takes the reading from 2.8 to 3.1.

Google's 890 new nuclear megawatts lift the energy reading 0.3 points

The move

The data5 rows · sources

Measure	Value
Reading before this day	2.8
This piece's move	+0.3 (Energy, reported)
Band for reported evidence	0.3 to 0.8
Reading after the day	3.1
Distance to 100	96.9

By the numbers

• 3,590 megawatts in the two contracts combined, as Reuters added them ³
• New nuclear output: 890 megawatts, bought for 20 years ¹
• Existing output: 2,700 megawatts, bought for 15 years ¹
• More than $4.3 billion of new investment by Constellation ¹
• About 24.8 percent of the 3,590 megawatts is new, by this desk's arithmetic ¹
• Constellation's shares closed up 12.2 percent at $300.40 on Oct. 6 ³¹³
• PJM's July auction cleared 525 megawatts of new generation and uprates against a 6,831-megawatt shortfall ¹¹

What to watch

Three filings will show whether the 890 megawatts stay on schedule: Constellation's license amendment requests at the NRC, FERC's ruling on PJM's bring-your-own-capacity rule, and any registration of the uprates as new capacity under it ⁵¹². PJM's December base auction for 2029/2030 will show whether the shortfall narrows ¹¹. A first uprate running at higher power by 2028 would earn a confirmed step on a later day, and a slip past 2032 or a cut to the 890 would argue for a correction down. The open question is a household one: will the new megawatts reach the grid before the data centers they serve raise the capacity bill that 67 million people in PJM pay?