Constellation Energy president and CEO Joseph Dominguez told investors this week that existing power plants, not new dedicated generation, will carry the earliest phase of data center growth in the United States. Dominguez made the comments during the company's second-quarter earnings call on August 6, 2026.
Dominguez said the country cannot wait for new power plants to be built before connecting new data centers to the grid. He described the current situation as a peak capacity issue rather than a broader energy shortage, noting that the transmission and generation system can already serve customers reliably more than 99 percent of hours in a year. He said the remaining peak hours can be managed through batteries, demand response programs and peaking generation resources.
Constellation owns about 55 gigawatts of generation capacity, including roughly 22 gigawatts of nuclear power. The company said its nuclear fleet could gain up to 1.1 gigawatts of additional output through planned reactor uprates. Separately, Constellation agreed to sell its 606-megawatt, gas-fired Brazos Valley power plant in Texas to LS Power for $860 million as part of asset sale requirements tied to its earlier Calpine acquisition.
The earnings call also addressed a pause in Texas' large-load interconnection process for data centers, ordered by state officials to review proposed projects' power supply plans, water use and financial impact on ratepayers. Constellation executives said they do not expect the review to cause meaningful delays to pending projects and that wholesale power prices in the Texas grid are likely to rise as new data center load comes online.
Source: Utility Dive -- https://www.utilitydive.com/news/existing-power-plants-supply-data-centers-constellation/827326/