Why Google is paying to upgrade nuclear power plants

Filed 1h ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk

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Doh De Oh

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jason Krüger for Wikimedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Georgia Public Service Commission approved a deal under which Google will help pay, starting in 2028, for upgrades to aging reactors at Plant Vogtle and Plant Hatch, adding about 96 megawatts of nuclear capacity. Google pays a subscription fee atop its electric bill and in exchange counts the power toward its 2030 carbon-free energy goal, since nuclear output qualifies and runs continuously unlike solar or wind.

Georgia Power says the arrangement will deliver roughly $900 million in benefits to customers over the life of the units, though the full terms of the deal have not been made public. Google separately announced similar nuclear-upgrade partnerships with Constellation Energy in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, part of a broader trend of tech companies bankrolling grid upgrades to keep pace with data center power demand.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A $900 million customer benefit sounds grand until you notice nobody outside the room has seen the contract that produces it. Google gets to call its data centers green, the utility gets a tech company to help pay for repairs it needed anyway, and the rest of us get a press release doing the arithmetic for us. Maybe it all nets out fine, but 'trust the projected benefits' is not a phrase that has aged well around utility bills.

Source: Read the original at Grist → Scored: Doh De Oh · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0