Microsoft's major datacenter investment deals signal hyperscaler commitment to building massive AI infrastructure capacity and GPU procurement pipelines.
US utilities are capitalizing on surging data-centre power demand driven by artificial intelligence adoption, translating into concrete supply agreements and higher profit prospects. Data centres are expected to account for 8% of the power generated in the US by 2030, compared with 3% in 2022, according to a Goldman Sachs report in May. This shift represents a fundamental reorientation of utility business models toward large-scale industrial customers.
Nuclear generation is playing a central role in utility strategies to meet this demand. Constellation Energy signed an exclusive deal with Microsoft to restart one of the units at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, providing 835 megawatts of energy to the tech giant's data centres—marking the first ever restart of a nuclear power plant in the U.S. after it was shut down. Beyond nuclear, Exelon is in the engineering phase for more than 5 gigawatts of data centre capacity, while some data-centre customers have made deposits for ComEd, Exelon's subsidiary, to order transmission and breakers.
Large-capacity agreements are proliferating across regions. American Electric Power signed letters of intent to power an additional 15 GW of data centres by the end of the decade. AES signed an agreement with Google for 310 megawatts to support its Ohio data centres and further expanded a partnership with Google, signing a 15-year power purchase agreement for 727 megawatts in Texas. Talen Energy announced a deal to supply electricity and its 960 MW data centre campus to Amazon's AWS in Pennsylvania. Pinnacle West Capital has more than 4,000 MW of committed data centre customers, not including a backlog of more than 10,000 data centre requests it has received.
Regional utilities are extending data-centre power networks across the country. Xcel Energy will supply power to Meta Platforms' data centre in Minnesota, expected to come online in late summer 2025. Entergy received legislative approval for investment in transmission and generation to serve Amazon's AWS facility in Mississippi and signed a deal with Meta to supply power to its data centre in Louisiana, which would be Meta's largest data center in the world. NorthWestern Energy has signed a letter of intent to provide energy services to a data centre developer in Montana, with the load expected to be a minimum of 50 MW beginning 2027 and growing to 250 MW or more by 2029. Ameren signed a supply deal with 250 MW capacity and received expansion commitments for more 85 MW of additional load across Missouri and Illinois, while NextEra's renewables segment saw a rise of 3 GW of renewables and storage projects in the second quarter, including Google's 860 MW demand for its data centre power.