Servers at a data center of VK Company Limited in Moscow, Russia, January 19, 2022. VK's social network VKontakte and Mail.ru Mail are some of the strongest brands in the Russian segment of the Internet. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday voted down a request by Talen Energy Corp. that would have increased the amount of power its nuclear plant could supply to an Amazon Web Services data centre. Shares of US power producers slumped in response, as investors bet that FERC’s ruling would set back efforts by major technology companies to gain quick access to nuclear energy to power their growing data centres.
“We remain committed to continue innovating and advancing carbon-free energy solutions with companies like Talen Energy to power data centre operations in the United States and the many technologies supporting our customers and our daily lives,” Duncan Neasham, an Amazon spokesperson, said on Monday in an email. Reached by phone, Neasham confirmed the company intends to go forward with the Talen project.
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Talen in March had announced that Amazon’s cloud computing unit would pay $650-million for a data centre campus of as much as 960 megawatts adjacent to Talen’s Susquehanna nuclear plant.
Under the deal, the data centre campus would be powered directly by the plant, meaning Amazon wouldn’t have to plug into the wider grid or fund related transmission upgrades. Some utility owners challenged the move, saying it could threaten grid reliability and raise rates. Talen had previously secured the rights to power the facility with as much as 300 megawatts in that manner. That authorization is unaffected by FERC’s ruling.
Amazon and other big cloud-computing companies, desperate for power to support their growing operations while pursuing their public goals to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, have sought agreements with operators of nuclear power plants.