Amazon recently bought a data center next to the Susquehanna Nuclear Plant in Eastern Pennsylvania. They will use it to help run Amazon Web Services, AWS for short, the company’s cloud-computing service used by many companies, governments, and individuals. The data center will draw energy directly from the nuclear plant to power the data center’s servers, cooling systems, and other infrastructure. This arrangement avoids the lengthy and costly process of connecting to the aging electric grid, making it a test case as more big technology companies look to strike similar deals. Benjamin Lee, University of Pennsylvania Engineering Professor: "Now, this is a departure from how data centers normally procure energy. Because normally a data centers would connect with the grid operator and say, I would like to build a data center here and you will give me the electricity that we've contracted to purchase. And they could be coming from any source. They could be coming from nuclear, they could be coming from wind or solar, and they're just electrons flowing through the grid." Utilities argue these partnerships are unfair because they allow tech companies to bypass grid maintenance costs paid by other users. This could raise electricity prices and reduce power availability for the general public. Amazon and other technology firms say they need fast, reliable, cleaner power to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technologies. Federal officials say fast development of data centers is vital to the economy and national security. Lee: "I think in the near term AI is moving so quickly. And that means supplying the right amount of energy for these 100 megawatt datacenters or larger. So I think we need to be able to build these data centers and supply them with energy…we need to be on that frontier." At the Susquehanna Plant, Amazon seeks to increase its power consumption through its direct connection to the nuclear facility, potentially up to 40% of the plant’s capacity—enough to supply energy to more than half a million homes. However, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has, for now, rejected Amazon’s proposal to draw additional energy from the nuclear power plant. Lee: "This decision really reflects increasing concerns about the extent to which this connection between Amazon and the nuclear power plant is truly independent of the broader grid." Commissioners say they need to figure out how to regulate such arrangements in the future amid expectations of similar requests from data center companies and nuclear plants around the country.