Google and Constellation Energy on Oct. 6 announced a long-term strategic clean energy collaboration to bring 890 megawatts of new nuclear capacity onto the PJM Interconnection grid to meet growing demand and increase grid reliability.
The 20-year power purchase agreement will enable investments in new equipment and technology at 11 Constellation-owned nuclear units in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, increasing thermal and electrical efficiency to unlock additional reliable, firm power to serve the grid. This capacity is entirely new, expanding total electricity generation available across the PJM footprint.
The agreement helps sustain roughly 4,400 existing jobs, creates approximately 7,200 new construction jobs during the building period and represents more than $4.3 billion of new investment by Constellation, a news release said.
In addition to expanding nuclear generation, the companies entered into a 15-year energy supply agreement for an additional 2,700 MW in PJM's fleet. This financial structure ensures that Constellation's operating generation assets continue to deliver energy and capacity to the PJM market, the news release said.
Constellation also selected Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise under an expanded five-year technology alliance to establish an "AI for energy" blueprint that will accelerate capacity delivery, optimize asset dispatch, and protect critical infrastructure.
For communities served by Constellation Energy, the aim is to use AI to reduce the costs of new infrastructure, improve performance, ensure enough power is generated to meet rising demand, and safeguard the energy grid they rely on.
"As national electricity demand accelerates from manufacturing, industrial electrification, and digital infrastructure, nuclear uprates provide a practical, near-term mechanism to deploy firm, clean megawatts. By modernizing and upgrading turbines, steam generators, and digital control systems at operating plants, uprates deliver substantial capacity gains without the multi-year timelines or interconnection bottlenecks associated with greenfield construction," the news release said.
The 890 MW of incremental capacity delivered through this collaboration equals the output of several Small Modular Reactors or a large new conventional reactor.
The initiative directly advances the goals of the federal government's UPRISE program, which encourages public-private collaboration to maximize clean electricity output from existing American nuclear infrastructure, according to the news release.
The agreement offers a direct response to PJM's "Bring Your Own Power" proposal, providing a practical model for how major power consumers can expand new supply alongside growing operational requirements, without state or federal mandates, the companies said.
"This approach aligns with the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge and represents Google's commitment to bring new capacity to the PJM system to support its growth without passing on costs to residential customers."
Key elements of the comprehensive commercial agreement include:
- Direct supply expansion: Adding 890 MW of carbon-free capacity to the grid through targeted investments at multiple nuclear plants, with the first uprate expected to be delivered by 2028.
- Revenue certainty: Ensuring continued operations through a 2,700 MW, 15-year agreement that ensures existing assets remain economically viable without taking resources off of the grid.
- Demand flexibility integration: Incorporating operational load-shaping and demand-response capabilities to curtail non-critical power consumption during high-stress grid events.
- Economic and community investment: Sustaining high-skilled union maintenance, engineering, and operations employment across host communities in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. Across six nuclear sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the agreement helps sustain roughly 4,400 existing jobs, creates approximately 7,200 new construction jobs during the building period and represents more than $4.3 billion of new investment by Constellation.
Google and Constellation have agreed upon a strategic framework to evaluate opportunities to develop new clean generation, storage and demand response across the United States to support Google's growth. The framework is intended to identify potential projects, commercial structures, and policy pathways that could support additional clean technologies in the years ahead, and prioritizes near-term efforts in PJM.
Under the expanded five-year technology agreement, Constellation will build Gemini Enterprise agentic workflows directly into its core operations.
Each of the initial three focus areas is tied to a clear benefit for the communities Constellation serves:
- Speed to power: AI for intelligent site selection, power flow modeling, permitting and interconnection planning. This shortens the engineering and regulatory work on uprates, so new capacity reaches the grid sooner and at lower cost.
- Generation optimization: Asset health monitoring, outage and turnaround management, and scenario optimization to speed up construction. This keeps plants running at full output, so supply keeps up with rising demand.
- Protecting critical infrastructure: Google Cloud's defense-grade platforms for highly regulated work, used to secure operational technology (OT) networks. Many of these networks are air-gapped and connect to the bulk electric system. This helps keep the grid that homes and businesses rely on secure and resilient.
