Evergy has executed electric service agreements with 2.5 GW of data centers under its large-load power service tariff, as well as agreements with 500 MW of smaller large loads not covered by the tariff, utility executives said in a Thursday second-quarter earnings call.
The utility company plans to build more than 5 GW of generation through 2032, including 3.9 GW of natural gas, close to 800 MW of solar and 450 MW of battery storage, Evergy CEO and Chairman David Campbell said during the call. The capacity of Evergy’s current fleet is around 15.8 GW.
The recently signed ESAs support Evergy’s expected 7% to 8% growth in retail sales through 2030, said Evergy CFO and Executive Vice President Bryan Buckler. Evergy bumped this expectation up from 6% in the fourth quarter of last year to 7% to 8% in the first quarter of this year in response to an increase in large load business.
“The large load customer ramps are already underway and are expected to continue building in aggregate through 2030 and beyond,” Buckler said. “This reflects the impact of Digital Realty, the fifth ESA customer announced on our first-quarter call.”
In addition to having 3 GW of signed large load contracts, Evergy is in “advanced discussions” with customers representing “representing approximately 1 or 2 gigawatts” of large loads, Campbell said. “These customers have acquired land or land rights, signed letters of agreement and we are actively reviewing transmission and generation capacity solutions,” he said, and “the opportunity from these customers is primarily beyond 2030.”
The remaining pipeline of incremental projects not yet in the active queue totals “well over 10 additional GW,” Campbell said, and will also materialize “primarily beyond 2030.”
Campbell said that Evergy continues to “make progress towards agreements on expansion projects;” the company is “highly confident that we'll execute at least one more ESA in 2026” and expects to provide more details during the third-quarter call in November. “Momentum with our customer pipeline and discussions on new projects is outstanding, and we expect that to continue into 2027,” he said.
However, “additional load beyond the 3 GW signed to date is expected to require incremental generation resource needs and incremental capex as a result,” Campbell said. The generation build-out proposed in recent integrated resource plans is not in Evergy’s capital expenditure plan of $21.6 billion over the next five years, which the utility announced in February.
“To serve incremental load, we do expect that there are going to be additional resource requirements, primarily generation-related,” Campbell said. “We're seeing cost trends that are in line with what you're seeing for other utilities. The capital investment that would follow is pretty meaningful. So it would drive, we expect, incremental capex.”
Evergy estimated that its pending resource plans would add about $1 billion in capital spending.
Evergy’s weather-normalized demand grew 1.8% year over year and 3.3% year to date, primarily driven by commercial and industrial demand, Buckler said. He also noted that commercial demand grew 4% year to date, “reflecting the initial ramp-up and higher usage associated with data center projects.”
