Duke Energy signed agreements in the third quarter of this year to connect 2 GW of new data centers, and anticipates load growth to begin accelerating in 2027, the company announced in a Thursday earnings call.
“The projects that we're talking to customers about today will show up in late '27, '28 and ramp up in the balance of the decade,” said Duke Energy CFO Brian Savoy. “So you're going to see this kind of burst of activity that will be signing contracts that will come to reality in '27, '28, '29, when we see acceleration of load growth.”
Savoy declined to say whether the 2 GW in expected data center load growth is composed of one customer or multiple, as the details are still confidential, he said. However, he noted that the signing of a letter agreement only occurs when a customer “has a site identified and land secured either through options or purchased.”
The next step in the process is for Duke to negotiate an energy service agreement to negotiate payment rates, and the details of this will come out over the next year, he said.
“This is emblematic of what we're seeing across the board,” Savoy said. He declined to discuss Microsoft’s recently reported acquisition of land in North Carolina, but said Duke is “having talks with many customers and they're very serious about siting their data centers in the Carolinas, specifically because in the Carolinas over half our energy is carbon-free nuclear.”
“And that's very attractive to the data centers,” he said. “So we see this as a great opportunity for us and we're seeing it come to reality as we sign agreements like these.”
Duke also announced that its adjusted earnings per share dropped year-over-year, from $1.94 for the third quarter of 2023 to $1.62 in the third quarter of 2024. The unadjusted reported EPS for the third quarter of 2023 was $1.59, while the reported EPS for the third quarter of 2024 was $1.60.
“Lower third-quarter 2024 adjusted results were driven by a higher effective tax rate, storm costs, interest expense and depreciation on a growing asset base,” Duke said in a release. “These items were partially offset by growth from rate increases and riders.”
Shar Pourreza, a senior managing director at Guggenheim Partners, noted that Duke is still projecting a total load growth of 1.5% to 2% for 2023 to 2028, trending toward the high end, “which doesn't really jive with what's been going on around the country.”
“A lot of your peers have jumped ahead and revised their load growth figures. They're quantifying the impacts and it's actually hitting their numbers ... What should we expect from Duke?” Pourreza asked during the earnings call. “Are you seeing similar trends as what we're seeing around the jurisdictions and do you expect it to potentially be accretive to your numbers?”
Savoy said that Duke is “trending at the top and we expect that range to move as we look to next year …. because the economic development opportunities are not slowing down and they're very sizable.”
The company will update its load growth estimate in February, Savoy said.
