Talen Energy
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Talen Energy Corporation (Nasdaq: TLN) is an American independent power producer headquartered in Houston, Texas, that owns and operates roughly 13 gigawatts of electricity generation, anchored by the Susquehanna nuclear plant in northeastern Pennsylvania. The company was created in 2015 from a spinoff of PPL Corporation's competitive generation business, went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022 and 2023, and then relisted on the public markets. Talen became one of the most closely watched names in the power sector after it agreed to sell a data-center campus next to Susquehanna to Amazon and to supply that campus with carbon-free nuclear power. The arrangement turned into the leading test case for whether large AI data centers can be co-located directly at nuclear plants, a question that drew a contested ruling from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and reshaped how the largest U.S. grid treats such deals.
Talen Energy was formed on June 1, 2015, when PPL Corporation spun off its competitive power generation business and immediately combined it with generation assets held by the private equity firm Riverstone Holdings. Immediately after the transaction, PPL shareholders owned about 65 percent of Talen and Riverstone affiliates owned about 35 percent, and the company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. On December 6, 2016, Riverstone bought the remaining 65 percent it did not already own, taking Talen private in a deal valued at roughly $5.2 billion. The fleet that came across in the spinoff included PPL's former plants in Pennsylvania and Montana, with the Susquehanna nuclear station as the centerpiece.
Talen Energy Supply, LLC filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in May 2022, after a spike in power and natural gas prices strained the collateral requirements on its hedging positions and triggered a liquidity crisis. The bankruptcy court confirmed the plan of reorganization on December 15, 2022, and Talen emerged from Chapter 11 on May 17, 2023. The plan eliminated about $2.2 billion of debt and transferred ownership of the reorganized company to its former creditors, a group made up largely of financial institutions.
After emerging, Talen's common stock began trading over the counter under the ticker "TLNE" on June 23, 2023. The company uplisted to the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "TLN" on July 10, 2024. Mark "Mac" McFarland became president and chief executive in June 2023, with Terry Nutt as chief financial officer. As an independent power producer with heavy exposure to nuclear baseload at a moment of surging electricity demand, Talen's shares rose sharply after the relisting; the company carried a market capitalization of roughly $17 billion in early June 2026 on about 45 million shares outstanding, according to market data.
The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station near Berwick, Pennsylvania, is Talen's flagship asset and one of the larger nuclear plants in the United States. It consists of two General Electric boiling water reactors housed in Mark II containments, with Unit 1 entering commercial operation in 1983 and Unit 2 in 1985. The two units have a combined net capacity of about 2,475 megawatts. Talen owns 90 percent of the station through its Susquehanna Nuclear, LLC subsidiary, equal to roughly 2,228 megawatts of capacity, while Allegheny Electric Cooperative owns the remaining 10 percent. The reactors are licensed to operate into 2042 and 2044. Susquehanna supplies a large share of Talen's annual output and is the foundation of the company's pitch to AI and cloud customers seeking nuclear power that runs around the clock without carbon emissions.
Beyond Susquehanna, Talen runs a dispatchable fossil fleet concentrated in the PJM Interconnection region, plus assets in Montana. The portfolio has grown through acquisition. In July 2025 Talen agreed to buy two combined-cycle gas plants, the 1,045 MW Moxie Freedom Energy Center in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and the 1,836 MW Guernsey Power Station in Guernsey County, Ohio, from Caithness Energy and BlackRock for about $3.5 billion net (roughly $3.8 billion gross). Those deals closed on November 25, 2025, adding about 2.8 GW. On January 15, 2026, Talen signed a further agreement to acquire three more gas-fired facilities in Ohio and Indiana, branded the Cornerstone portfolio, for about $3.45 billion, with closing expected in the second half of 2026.
| Asset / segment | Fuel | Location | Approx. capacity | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Susquehanna Steam Electric Station | Nuclear | Berwick, PA | ~2,475 MW total (Talen owns 90%, ~2,228 MW) | Two GE boiling water reactors; licensed to 2042 / 2044 |
| Moxie Freedom Energy Center | Natural gas (CCGT) | Luzerne County, PA | ~1,045 MW | Acquired Nov 25, 2025 |
| Guernsey Power Station | Natural gas (CCGT) | Guernsey County, OH | ~1,836 MW | Acquired Nov 25, 2025 |
| Cornerstone portfolio | Natural gas | Ohio and Indiana | Three facilities | Agreed Jan 15, 2026; closing expected 2H 2026 |
| Legacy fossil and peaking fleet | Gas and oil | PJM and Montana | Several GW | Includes former coal units converted to lower-carbon fuels |
| Total owned and operated | Mixed | U.S. | ~13.1 GW (incl. ~2.2 GW nuclear) | Figure reported with full-year 2025 results |
In March 2024, Talen sold its Cumulus data-center campus, a roughly 960 MW development directly connected to Susquehanna, to Amazon Web Services. AWS paid about $650 million in gross proceeds, with $350 million due at closing and $300 million held in escrow tied to development milestones. Talen recorded a net gain on the sale of about $324 million in the first half of 2024. Alongside the asset sale, the two companies signed a long-term power purchase agreement under which Talen would supply the campus with up to 960 MW of carbon-free nuclear power, ramping in 120 MW increments, with AWS holding an option to cap its commitment at 480 MW. The campus drew power behind the meter, meaning it took electricity directly from the plant rather than across the public transmission grid.
To allow the co-located load to grow, PJM Interconnection filed an amended interconnection service agreement (ISA) with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in June 2024 that would have raised the behind-the-meter connection from 300 MW to 480 MW. On November 1, 2024, FERC rejected the amended ISA in a 2-to-1 decision. Commissioners Mark Christie and Lindsay See formed the majority, finding that PJM had not met its burden to show that the agreement's non-standard provisions were justified by specific reliability concerns, novel legal issues, or other unique factors. Chairman Willie Phillips dissented, calling the arrangement a "first of its kind" deal that warranted flexibility and warning that rejection raised national security risks. American Electric Power and Exelon had challenged the agreement, arguing in part that the co-location setup could shift up to $140 million a year in transmission costs onto other PJM ratepayers because a large customer would draw on grid services without paying the usual charges.
Talen sought rehearing on November 20, 2024. On December 23, 2024, FERC issued an order declining to act on the rehearing request within the statutory window, a step that left the original order ripe for appeal, and Talen said it would pursue its appellate remedies. The episode made Susquehanna the focal point of a wider debate: FERC opened a commissioner-led technical conference on co-locating large loads at generators (Docket AD24-11), and in February 2025 it launched a show-cause proceeding directing PJM to justify or revise its rules. On December 18, 2025, FERC issued an order requiring PJM to create new transmission service options for co-located load and to revise its behind-the-meter generation rules, with compliance steps beginning in January 2026.
Rather than keep fighting over the behind-the-meter design, Talen restructured the deal. On June 11, 2025, it announced an expanded agreement to supply Amazon with up to 1,920 MW of nuclear power from Susquehanna through 2042, with options to extend. The key change was structural: the power would be delivered "front of the meter," flowing across the grid under existing rules, which Talen said does not require the FERC approval that had blocked the earlier expansion. Deliveries are set to scale up over time, reaching roughly 840 MW to 1,200 MW by 2029 and 1,680 MW to 1,920 MW by 2032. The existing co-located arrangement is to transition to the front-of-the-meter structure after transmission reconfigurations expected in the spring of 2026, timed to coincide with a Susquehanna refueling outage. Talen valued the expanded relationship at about $18 billion over the roughly 17-year term. The two companies also said they would explore building small modular reactors within Talen's Pennsylvania footprint and pursue uprates to increase Susquehanna's output, with the stated aim of adding new generation to the grid. Separately, Amazon said in June 2025 that it would invest about $20 billion in data centers in Pennsylvania.
| Milestone | Date | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Cumulus campus sale to AWS | March 2024 | ~$650M gross ($350M at close, $300M escrow); behind-the-meter PPA up to 960 MW, AWS option to cap at 480 MW |
| Amended ISA filed by PJM | June 2024 | Sought to raise co-located load from 300 MW to 480 MW |
| FERC rejects amended ISA | November 1, 2024 | 2-to-1 vote (Christie, See in majority; Phillips dissent) |
| Talen requests rehearing | November 20, 2024 | FERC defers; order becomes ripe for appeal (Dec 23, 2024) |
| Expanded front-of-the-meter PPA | June 11, 2025 | Up to 1,920 MW through 2042; ~$18B; SMR and uprate exploration |
| FERC co-location order to PJM | December 18, 2025 | New transmission service options for co-located load |
Talen has positioned itself as a supplier of always-on, carbon-free electricity to the hyperscale computing industry at a time when AI training and inference are driving steep increases in data center power demand. Nuclear baseload is attractive to operators such as Microsoft, Google, and customers building large Nvidia GPU clusters because it runs continuously and emits no carbon during operation, which helps reconcile rapid capacity growth with corporate climate goals. The Susquehanna-Amazon agreement is widely viewed as the bellwether for co-locating computing load at nuclear stations, and the regulatory fight it touched off set precedents that affect every similar proposal in PJM.
The model is not unique to Talen. Constellation Energy reached a deal to restart a unit at Three Mile Island for Microsoft, and startups such as Oklo are marketing small modular reactors aimed in part at data centers. What distinguishes Talen is that it owns a large operating reactor that is already adjacent to a built data-center campus, which let it move from announcement to delivery faster than projects that depend on new construction. The trade-off, exposed by the November 2024 FERC ruling, is that connecting big loads directly to a plant raises unresolved questions about who pays for the transmission grid those loads still rely on for backup and reliability.
For full-year 2025, reported on February 26, 2026, Talen posted operating revenue of about $2,581 million and a GAAP net loss attributable to stockholders of about $219 million, while adjusted EBITDA came in at about $1,035 million and adjusted free cash flow at about $524 million. The net loss reflected non-cash and one-time items rather than operating weakness, and management reaffirmed 2026 guidance for adjusted EBITDA of $1,750 million to $2,050 million and adjusted free cash flow of $980 million to $1,180 million, a sharp step up that reflects the Amazon contract ramp and the newly acquired gas plants. The 2025 results were also affected by an extended Susquehanna refueling outage, which raised capital spending during the year.
| Metric (full-year 2025) | Value |
|---|---|
| Operating revenue | ~$2,581 million |
| GAAP net loss attributable to stockholders | ~$(219) million |
| Adjusted EBITDA | ~$1,035 million |
| Adjusted free cash flow | ~$524 million |
| 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance | $1,750M to $2,050M |
| 2026 adjusted free cash flow guidance | $980M to $1,180M |