Analysts have said the deal is tied to NextEra’s goal of being a leading player in supplying power for the energy-intensive data center sector. Dominion, with four million customers in Virginia and the Carolinas, is the utility currently most closely tied to providing electricity for the so-called “Data Center Alley” of Loudon County, Virginia.
NextEra’s market cap of $195 million makes it the largest U.S. utility by valuation, almost twice as much as Southern Co., the next-largest utility, which has a market cap of about $104 billion.
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(Probably a typo in the last paragraph above. NextEra market cap more like $195 billion.)
The utilities are not going to let Data Centers just bring their own power generation. The utilities know that Data Center developers need to connect to the grid and to be supported by utility power genration.