(Reuters) – Major U.S. power company NextEra Energy announced a plan to acquire Dominion Energy in a $66.8 billion deal that would create one of the world’s largest electric utilities.
The combined company would have an enterprise value of roughly $420 billion, making it the third-biggest American energy company behind oil majors Exxon and Chevron but bigger than the next two largest U.S. power companies combined.
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The deal underscores how utility companies now need larger balance sheets, broader generation portfolios, and faster infrastructure deployment to compete in the AI era.
Here are some of the biggest U.S. utilities and power producers:
NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy
- NextEra is the largest U.S. utility with a market capitalization of about $185.68 billion. Following its acquisition of Dominion, it would have a market cap of roughly $249 billion.
- Operates through Florida Power & Light, which serves Florida, and NextEra Energy Resources, which develops and sells power from wind, solar, battery storage and generation assets across the U.S. and in parts of Canada.
- The combined company would provide services to roughly 10 million utility customer accounts across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
- Following deal completion, the combined utility will have 130 gigawatts of data center pipeline and expects to have a generation fleet with 260 GW of installed capacity by 2032.
- The combined company expects to spend $59 billion annually from 2027 to 2032.
Southern Company
- Market value of about $105.64 billion and serves 9 million customers across the southeastern U.S., mainly through Alabama Power, Georgia Power and Mississippi Power, along with its gas distribution businesses in several states.
- The company has power supply deals with Meta Platforms and Microsoft.
- Southern has locked in over 11 GW of contracted large-load capacity across 28 major projects, supported by a massive 75 GW prospective pipeline of active inquiries.
- Plans to deploy $81 billion in capital expenditures over its 2026 to 2030 forecast.
Duke Energy
- The utility has a market value of $95.77 billion and serves customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.
- The regulated utility has power supply deals with Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
- Duke serves residential, commercial and industrial power customers and also has natural gas operations and its electric utilities serve about 8.6 million customers and own around 55,100 megawatts of energy capacity.
- Has secured 7.6 GW of contracted capacity with data center customers
- Deploying a record-setting $103 billion in total capital expenditures over its updated five-year growth plan through 2030.
Constellation Energy
- The biggest independent power company, valued at about $94.63 billion, operates across the U.S. and is more focused on power generation and retail energy supply than a traditional local regulated utility.
- The company has a power supply agreement with Microsoft that would also help restart the 835 MW Three Mile Island nuclear plant. It also has an agreement to supply 1.1 GW of gas and geothermal power from its newly acquired Calpine fleet to CyrusOne.
- It supplies electricity to commercial and industrial customers, public-sector clients, residential customers in competitive markets, utilities and wholesale power markets.
- Constellation has about 55 gigawatts of generation capacity and produces roughly 10% of U.S. clean energy.
- Plans $3.9 billion in capital spending in 2026.
American Electric Power
- With a market value of $72.48 billion, the utility operates in parts of 11 states: Ohio, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
- The company has power supply agreements with Amazon, Google and Microsoft through an Indiana Michigan Power settlement.
- AEP is a regulated utility serving residential, commercial and industrial customers and is also a major transmission owner. It serves about 5.6 million customers across more than 200,000 square miles.
- Signed 7 gigawatts of new large energy project agreements during the first quarter, primarily in Ohio and Texas. Nearly 90% of AEP’s 63 GW of expected incremental contracted load by 2030 is from data centers, including hyperscalers.
- Raised its five-year capital expenditure plan to $78 billion for the 2026 to 2030 period.
Note: All data are current as of May 19.
Reporting by Dharna Bafna and Pranav Mathur in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel
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