Google has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation that will fund power uprates at 11 Constellation-owned nuclear units at six sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The companies announced the agreement on Oct. 6, 2026 and said the uprates will add 890 MW of new capacity to the PJM Interconnection grid. Constellation said it will make more than $4.3 billion in new investment in the work and expects the first uprate to be delivered by 2028.

An uprate raises the output of an existing reactor rather than building a new one. Constellation describes the added output as entirely new capacity rather than reallocated output from its existing fleet, POWER reported.

What the agreement covers

The PPA is one of several pieces in the announcement. Constellation's release describes:

  • The uprate PPA: a 20-year contract that funds new equipment and technology at the 11 units.
  • A separate supply agreement: a 15-year agreement covering an additional 2,700 MW from Constellation's existing PJM fleet, which the company said keeps those assets economically viable and on the grid.
  • Demand flexibility: load-shaping and demand-response capabilities that curtail Google's non-critical consumption during high-stress grid events.
  • A technology alliance: an expanded five-year AI for Energy alliance with Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise, covering speed to power, generation optimization and protection of critical infrastructure.
  • A framework for new resources: an arrangement to evaluate new clean generation, storage and demand response across the U.S., with near-term efforts prioritized in PJM.

Under the technology agreement, Constellation will build Gemini Enterprise agentic workflows "directly into its core operations," Utility Dive reported, with AI applied to site selection, power flow modeling, permitting, interconnection planning and infrastructure security.

Across the six sites, the agreement will sustain about 4,400 existing jobs and support about 7,200 new construction jobs during the build period, Constellation said.

"Our agreement with Constellation to fund nuclear reactor uprates will strengthen the PJM grid," Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's global head of energy and power, said in the companies' announcement. Joe Dominguez, Constellation's chairman, president and CEO, said in the same release that the "long-term clean energy collaboration with Google can serve as a model for how technology companies" and the energy industry can work together.

Which reactors

The six sites in the deal host 12 reactors, and one of them appears to be excluded from the uprate program, POWER reported. POWER, citing Nuclear Newswire, listed the likely sites as Braidwood, Byron, LaSalle and Quad Cities in Illinois, Limerick in Pennsylvania and Salem in New Jersey.

POWER also pointed to Constellation's plans for 12 uprate filings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission between the fourth quarter of 2026 and the end of 2030: five extended power uprates (EPUs) and seven measurement uncertainty recapture (MUR) uprates.

The PJM capacity backdrop

Constellation's release said the agreement offers a "direct response" to PJM's "Bring Your Own Power" proposal, a model for large power users to add new supply, and aligns with the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which Google commits to add capacity without passing costs to residential customers. PJM's formal version, the Bring Your Own New Capacity (BYONC) proposal, was filed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Aug. 13 in Docket No. ER26-3515-000, according to POWER.

PJM is about 6.8 GW short of new capacity as data center demand rises, according to Utility Dive, which also reported that FERC partly approved PJM's reliability backstop procurement plan on Sept. 29, 2026. The Google deal followed by a week Constellation's 20-year agreement with Amazon tied to its Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, which includes a roughly 190-MW uprate expected online between 2030 and 2032. Together, about 1,080 MW of planned Constellation uprates are now tied to long-term contracts with technology companies, POWER reported.

What Happens Next

Constellation's NRC uprate filings are planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026 and run through the end of 2030. Google expects all of the uprate capacity to be online by the end of 2032, POWER reported. PJM's BYONC proposal was still awaiting FERC action when POWER reported on Oct. 7, and neither company had said whether the uprate capacity would be registered under it. As of Oct. 20, 2026, the companies had not disclosed how the total will be split among the units or which reactor at the six sites is excluded.

Sources