Talen Asks U.S. Regulators To Nix Case Against Its Amazon Data Center Deal

Talen Energy has asked US regulators to reject a challenge to its recent Amazon data center deal, which is being opposed by a group of electric utilities that say the agreement could raise power bills for the public, a recent filing showed, Laila Kearney reported for Reuters.

Technology companies are in a race to access massive amounts of electricity supplies to power and cool the data centers, or giant computer warehouses, needed to roll out technologies like generative AI. I Photo: Jakec Wikimedia Commons

Talen said the challenge, brought by utilities including American Electric Power and Exelon, was inaccurate and that its interconnection agreement for the Amazon data center site would not cause spiking power costs for utility customers or grid reliability problems.

"It is an unlawful attempt to hijack this limited interconnection service agreement amendment proceeding that they have no stake in and turn it into an ad hoc national referendum on the future of data center load," Talen said in its filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Technology companies are in a race to access massive amounts of electricity supplies to power and cool the data centers, or giant computer warehouses, needed to roll out technologies like generative AI.

Nuclear energy, which is virtually carbon-free and provides around-the-clock power, has become a top pick for the data center industry.

FERC's decision could set a precedent for deals like the one with Talen, where data centers are located on the site of the power plants that feed them, allowing the centers to power up quickly without toiling in interconnection queues that can take years to clear.

Talen announced in March it had entered into an agreement to sell electricity and a data center campus located at its Pennsylvania nuclear power plant to Amazon Web Services.

The deal would provide Amazon's computer warehouses with an electric capacity of up to 960 megawatts, or enough to power about a million homes.