Talen Energy Corp. asked federal regulators to deny a protest by American Electric Power Co. Inc. and Exelon Corp. of an interconnection service agreement for the colocation of an Amazon.com Inc. datacenter campus at the Susquehanna Nuclear site.

The utility companies, on behalf of their subsidiaries operating in the PJM Interconnection LLC market, told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on June 24 (ER24-2172) that increasing the 300-MW behind-the-meter service already approved by the grid operator to 480 MW would require ratepaying customers to bear another $58 million to $140 million per year in transmission system costs. That load would still likely still need to draw from the broader PJM transmission system in the event of an outage at the two-unit, 2,494-MW Susquehanna facility in Luzerne County, Pa., AEP and Exelon said.

Talen subsidiary Susquehanna Nuclear LLC, which operates the plant, responded July 5 that the protest filing is "an unlawful attempt to hijack" the interconnection service agreement, which is with local transmission operator PPL Corp., and force "an ad hoc national referendum on the future of data center load."

Talen clarified that the nuclear site's second reactor will provide redundancy during any outages, preventing any grid reliability impacts, and that network transmission customers will not pay for any datacenter delivery facility costs due to the agreement's "behind-the-meter configuration."

"Susquehanna Nuclear did not hoodwink PJM and PPL," Talen wrote in the filing. "The parties to this interconnection agreement, being fully aware of the configuration, the facts, and the current operations for this co-located load, simply do not share AEP/Exelon's concerns."

The Talen subsidiary asked FERC to deny the protest and approve the amended interconnection agreement to protect "existing contractual arrangements."

"Delays caused by AEP/Exelon, who are not in any way involved in, or implicated by, the discrete co-located load configuration at issue here, would have an unmistakable chilling effect on future development and generator retention," Talen wrote. "The Commission should not countenance any anti-competitive exercise to scuttle or delay a legitimate bilateral commercial deal that all relevant parties — the regional grid operator, the competitive generator, and host utility — support."

Since Talen sold the datacenter campus to Amazon Web Services Inc. for $650 million, other independent power producers operating multi-unit nuclear plants have begun considering similar colocation deals, with generation assets totaling nearly 22 GW poised to take advantage of soaring electricity demand.