Talen asks US regulators to dismiss challenge to Amazon data center deal

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Talen Energy has asked U.S. regulators to reject a challenge to its recent data center deal with Amazon, which is being challenged by a group of electric utilities that say the deal could increase bills of the general public, according to a report. filing on Friday.

Talen said the challenge, brought by utilities including American Electric Power and Exelon, was inaccurate and that its interconnection agreement for Amazon’s data center would not cause grid reliability issues or increase utility costs. energy for public service customers.

“It is an illegal attempt to hijack this limited interconnection service contract change process, in which they have no stake, and turn it into an ad hoc national referendum on the future of data center load,” Talen said in his process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. .

Tech companies are in a race to access huge amounts of electricity supply to power and cool the data centers, or giant computer warehouses, needed to implement technologies like generative AI. Nuclear power, which is virtually carbon-free and provides power 24 hours a day, has become one of the leading options for the data center industry.

Talen announced in March that it had entered into an agreement to sell electricity and a data center campus located at its nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania to Amazon Web Services. The deal would provide Amazon’s computer warehouses with electrical capacity of up to 960 megawatts, or enough to power about a million homes.

Several electric utilities, including American Electric Power and Exelon, last month asked FERC to hold a hearing to further examine Talen’s interconnection deal with Amazon or deny it outright. The group said the interconnection agreement for the data center could result in a cost shift of $140 million per year to everyday taxpayers.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Josie Kao)