Google just signed one of the biggest power deals in tech history, and the headline number is misleading. The company says it contracted 3,590 megawatts from Constellation Energy. But only 890 of those megawatts are new, and no new reactor is being built. The rest is power that already exists. Behind the arithmetic sits a question that matters to anyone who pays an electric bill: when AI companies buy up the grid’s supply, who covers the cost?
What did Google actually sign?
The Google nuclear deal, announced on October 6, has two parts. The first is a 20-year power purchase agreement for 890 megawatts of new nuclear capacity. It comes from upgrades, known as uprates, at 11 Constellation reactors across six sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including Salem. Better turbines, steam generators and digital controls squeeze more power from plants that are already running. The first extra power is expected in 2028, and the project involves more than $4.3 billion in investment.
The second part is a separate 15-year supply agreement for 2,700 megawatts from Constellation’s existing plants on the PJM grid. Together they make 3,590 megawatts, and roughly a quarter of it is new.
There is also a tech twist: under a five-year agreement, Constellation will use Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise for site selection, power flow modeling, asset monitoring and cybersecurity. After the news, Constellation’s shares jumped more than 12%.
Why uprates instead of new reactors?
Uprates are the fastest route to more nuclear power. They avoid the multi-year timelines and grid-connection bottlenecks of building a plant from scratch. Constellation says the 890 megawatts is roughly the output of one large new reactor. Each uprate still needs a license amendment from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so the schedule is not guaranteed.
Google is not alone. Amazon announced its first nuclear uprate agreement with Constellation on September 30, and Meta has signed long-term nuclear deals in the same grid region. Microsoft is backing the restart of Crane Clean Energy Center. The pattern is clear: big tech is financing capacity at existing plants.
The real question: who pays?
PJM, the largest power grid in the United States, serves tens of millions of people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Data centers are driving up demand there, and capacity prices, which are the cost of guaranteeing power will be available, have risen more than elevenfold since 2024, according to one analysis. That cost eventually reaches household bills.
The companies say this deal is meant to help. It is structured to align with PJM’s “Bring Your Own Power” proposal, a framework that would let large power consumers add new supply to the grid without passing costs to residential customers. That is the company’s description, and the rule still needs approval from federal regulators.
What the headline hides
My reading is that three points matter more than the megawatt total.
First, buying existing supply doesn’t add power to the grid. When a tech giant locks up output from a running plant for 15 years, it reallocates electricity that others could have used. Only the uprates create new supply, and those arrive years from now.
Second, the contracts run for decades while the market is short-term. Analysts note that PJM’s capacity auction commits one year at a time, which makes it hard to finance a 20-year asset. A buyer willing to sign for 20 years can get new capacity built where the regular market can’t.
Third, scale. Google is on track to spend as much as $205 billion on data centers and computing this year, and the new nuclear capacity from this deal is about one large reactor. The gap between those numbers shows how far AI demand has run ahead of power supply.
What to watch
Watch whether federal regulators approve PJM’s “Bring Your Own Power” rule, whether the uprates clear NRC review on schedule, and whether other regions copy the model. The test for the Google nuclear deal is simple: does it add power to the grid, or just move it from one customer to another? The answer will decide whether AI’s electricity bill ends up on a tech company’s balance sheet or on yours.