Equalizing Data Center Power Balance: NextEra and Google Cloud Partner on Future AI Enablement
Florida-based utility and infrastructure developer NextEra Energy will partner with artificial intelligence (AI) platform Google Cloud to match new gigawatt-scale data center campuses with power generation capacity across the country.
The partnership calls for multiple projects nationwide and the first commercial product to be available on the Google Cloud Marketplace by the middle of 2026.
Developing AI-enhanced field operations is a goal for the partnership, which plans to integrate Google’s generative and agentic AI capabilities with NextEra’s asset data. NextEra provides utility power through its Florida Power & Light utility and develops multiple utility-scale and distributed energy projects nationwide.
AI already is making a huge impact in the commercial and industrial sectors. Leading industry speakers at the Schneider Electric Innovation Summit last month in Las Vegas quoted reports showing most major C&I corporations already were utilizing generative AI in their work plans.
NextEra’s top leader echoed those observations and noted this as a unique moment intersecting power generation and digital infrastructure.
"Our partnership with Google exemplifies this very singular moment when energy and technology are becoming inextricably intertwined," said NextEra Energy chairman and CEO John Ketchum in a statement. "Together, we intend to build data center capacity and energy infrastructure at scale, advance cutting-edge technology and reimagine how energy companies operate.
NextEra and Google Cloud will jointly develop multiple GW-scale data center campuses across the U.S. to enable the rapid development of the land, load interconnection and supporting generation and capacity resources required to deliver continued data center growth. The two companies have contracted approximately 3.5 GW in operation or contracted.
Recently, the companies announced the restart of the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa followed by two new long-term power purchase agreements to add 600 MW of clean energy capacity to Oklahoma's electricity grid to support Google's technology infrastructure.
NextEra and Google are not alone in embracing carbon-free nuclear generation to meet the rising demand from AI and cloud-based data computing. Constellation is working to reopen Three Mile Island Unit 1 (renamed Crane Clean Energy Center) in Pennsylvania under a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Microsoft.
Other data center hyperscalers and tech firms such as Meta and Amazon also are uniting with energy developers for new projects across natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy PPAs.
About the Author
EnergyTech Staff
Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.
Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
He can be reached at [email protected].
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.