Talen Energy & Amazon logos
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rejected a proposal from a grid operator, PJM, to ramp up the amount of power supplied through the grid from Talen Energy (Nasdaq: TLN) to an Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) data center.
FERC specifically rejected a request to increase the amount of power the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania for a data center campus that Talen Energy had sold to Amazon for $650 million earlier this year.
PJM is a regional transmission organization regulated by FERC that manages the high-voltage electricity grid for over 65 million people in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions.
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Talen Energy is a power producer that owns and operates power generation facilities across the United States, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic region and Montana.
Tech companies like Amazon are scrambling to find energy partners for data centers that consumer growing amounts of electricity to power AI and cloud computing. Utilities that own nuclear power plants are preferred, because they are viewed favorably by environmentalists and investors that want their portfolio companies to address climate change.
Talen Energy is trading at $167 a share, up 156% year-to-date. Amazon is trading at $195 a share, up 31% year-to-date.
Earlier today, the Financial Times reported that plans for Meta (Nasdaq: META) to build its own nuclear power plant ran into complications when a rare species of bees was discovered on land set aside for the data center.
