Independent power firm Talen Energy is looking to pivot away from crypto mining operations to supply power to data center developers instead.
First reported by KFGO, in a recent conference call the company confirmed it planned to sell its stake in the Bitcoin mining center located at its Pennsylvania nuclear power plant. Reuters had previously reported that the company was potentially looking to offload the facility.
Talen first announced its intent to move into the data center world in 2021, with plans to develop a cryptomine data center and hyperscale facility at its Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Salem Township, Luzerne County. The crypto side of the business was to be known as Cumulus Coin.
Commissioned in 1983 for energy company PPL, the 2,494MW Susquehanna Steam Electric Station is one of the largest nuclear power plants in the US.
Mark McFarland, CEO at Talen, this month said of the crypto business: “It’s not a strategic asset for us and we are looking at what other alternatives with respect to coin.”
Cryptocurrency firm TeraWulf partnered with Talen on the cryptomining project. The crypto firm has previously said it exercised its option to increase its energy resources at the Nautilus crypto mine data center by an additional 50MW (due to come online in 2025), bringing TeraWulf’s Bitcoin mining capacity at the Pennsylvania site to 100MW. Reuters reports Terawulf owns a 25 percent stake in the venture.
Talen also sold its hyperscale data center operation, also located next to the Susquehanna plant, to AWS earlier this year. AWS spent $650 million on the acquisition. At full build-out, Talen has previously said the campus could total 960MW.
Amazon now plans to construct 15 data center buildings over the course of the next decade.
AWS is now the landlord of its cryptomining facility, which reportedly has a remaining nine-year lease and power purchase agreement on the site, according to Reuters.
Talen is among many US energy companies benefiting from the power needs of AI and cloud computing data centers. Earlier this month, Dominion Energy explored the possibility of connecting a data center to its nuclear plant in Connecticut.
