NextEra Energy announced a flurry of deals on Monday related to a planned build-out of electricity-intensive artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, including with Meta and Google, two major US developers in the AI space.
NextEra said it signed approximately 2.5GW of clean energy contracts with Facebook owner Meta, 2.1GW of which comprise solar projects across three US grid systems: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Southwest Power Pool, and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. NextEra is also providing 190MW of solar and 168GW of battery storage to support the public utility system of New Mexico, which will allow Meta and other customers to contract for clean energy projects on its system.
Separately, NextEra and Google Cloud on Monday said they were significantly expanding their energy and technology partnership by developing "multiple, new [1GW-scale] data center campuses with accompanying generation and capacity". NextEra and Google are developing three campuses currently and are partnering to identify additional locations and expansions, they said. NextEra and Google already have 3.5GW of data center capacity in operation or contracted, the companies said.
NextEra on Monday also said it had agreed to acquire Symmetry Energy Solutions, a gas supplier serving 5,500 large commercial and industrial customers and 80,000 residential and small customers across 34 states.
US power demand is expected to surge over the next decade to run AI data centers after more than a decade of flat demand. Gas is poised to be the primary fuel source producing the power to run the electricity-intensive facilities because it is dispatchable, unlike wind and solar, and much cheaper and quicker to build than conventional nuclear, while small modular nuclear reactors are still untested at scale.
