Constellation Q3 updates: New Peak+, uprates, restart, midterm elections

Constellation has signed a 270-MW agreement with a customer that would link support for clean energy resources like nuclear to other new power generation resources.

This agreement under Constellation's Peak+ program was one of several nuclear-related items highlighted by Constellation executives at its third-quarter earnings call Monday. Other topics mentioned included the recent flurry of uprate announcements, the Crane restart, and the midterm elections.

A new agreement: In the third-quarter news release issued alongside the earnings call, the Peak+ program was described as an "integrated customer solution that combines new capacity to support peak demand growth with energy products tailored to customer needs." In this first agreement, Constellation signed a 20-year, 270-MW agreement "of unit-contingent energy, capacity, and attributes from our existing nuclear fleet set to begin in 2028."

President and CEO Joe Dominguez said in the earnings call that Peak+ would give "customers another path to get new demand on line efficiently and gives us another path to capture premium value that supports the existing fleet." One example he provided was potentially pairing a customer with a battery storage provider.

Constellation did not disclose who its first Peak+ customer is.

Uprates updates: During the third quarter of 2026, Constellation signed agreements with three customers for 4,560 MW, which includes 1,165 MW of new nuclear capacity through ongoing and planned uprates that the utility has said will cost $4.3 billion. It is set to invest roughly $1.3 billion in uprates in 2026-2027, with the other $3 billion to fund uprate projects in 2028-2032.

The Department of Energy has committed to a $5 billion conditional loan that would cover up to 80 percent of eligible costs from 2023 to 2035, according to Constellation. This could include potential future investments.

"We have not finished exploring uprates at plants. Design and engineering work continues," said Dominguez.

Constellation's nuclear fleet produced 46,677 GWh in the third quarter, up from 46,477 GWh in the third quarter of the previous year. Excluding its two partly owned plants, Salem and South Texas Project, its fleet reported a 97.2 percent capacity factor for the third quarter, higher than the 96.8 percent capacity factor reported for the third quarter of 2025.

Crane update: Dominguez said the restart of the former Three Mile Island-1 in Pennsylvania remains on track for the second half of 2027, which, he added, would be ahead of schedule. The restart project cleared a regulatory hurdle in September when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its final environmental assessment and a finding of no significant impact for Crane, a decision that Dominguez described as "favorable" during the earnings call. Fuel assemblies and transformers are already on site, he added.

Weighing in on midterms: Dominguez referenced the November 3 midterm elections a few times during the earnings call. He said there was a "bit of an overreaction" in the market to the election results-where Democrats flipped the U.S. House and U.S. Senate-and the impact Democratic majorities may have on the data center boom. Much like with nuclear energy expansion, Dominguez said there are bipartisan solutions out there to address the topic of data centers.

"The bottom line is Democrats care deeply about economic growth and they care very deeply about the many labor jobs that go with data center construction," he said. "Indeed, with labor such a key constituent for Democrats, it's hard to imagine that we are going to halt work."