Restarting Duane Arnold
John Ketchum, NextEra chairman, president and CEO, said that the company expects to return the 615-MW Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa to service by early 2029 or possibly in the fourth quarter of 2028 — earlier than some analysts had expected.
On Oct. 27, the company announced it had signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with Google to reopen the plant, which stopped operating in 2020. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval.
In addition to reopening Duane Arnold, a second deal with Google will enable the companies to explore building new, advanced nuclear generation in the U.S., Ketchum said. The company continues to speak with other large tech companies and data center operators about potential deals, he added.
NextEra could also “optimize” its 1,185-MW Point Beach nuclear plant in Wisconsin and its 1,250-MW Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire, according to Ketchum.
Those plants and Duane Arnold could accommodate about 6 GW of small modular reactors, he said.
Renewables and storage backlog grows
NextEra is well positioned to serve hyperscale tech companies who may be required to bring their own generation if they want to interconnect to the grid, Ketchum said. It can attract customers initially with the rapid deployment of renewable resources and energy storage — the company signed contracts for 1.9 GW of battery storage in the third quarter — and follow up later with gas generation, Ketchum said. The company also has the ability to build transmission and new natural gas lines to serve data center campuses, he said.
At the same time, NextEra plans to renegotiate a growing number of power purchase agreements on existing assets for higher prices as those contracts begin to expire, Ketchum said.
“Returns have [never] been higher than I've ever seen them in this industry,” he said. “It's just supply and demand. It's that simple. There's a lot of demand out there, and there's just not as much supply to match it. And so that's commanding premiums in the market and high and attractive returns.”
Its NextEra Energy Resources, or NEER, subsidiary added 3 GW of renewables and storage to its project backlog in the third quarter, including 1.9 GW of battery storage, 800 MW of solar and 300 MW of repowering existing projects, the company said.
The additions brought the company’s total backlog of renewables to 29.6 GW, net 1.7 GW of projects that were placed into service and 900 MW that were removed from the queue due to permitting and other delays.
Ketchum said he expects all or most of the delayed 900 MW to return to the backlog at a later date.
