Sept 14 (Reuters) - Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy on Monday said they would establish a ‌Virginia supplier program worth up to $1 billion ‌annually for five years if their proposed merger is approved.
They announced merger plans in May, as rising power demand from data centers, electric vehicles and other industries drives a renewed wave of utility consolidation.
• NextEra and ‌Dominion said the ⁠new program would direct spending toward contractors, suppliers and service providers in Virginia.
• ⁠They proposed extending monthly $10 bill credits to four years from two and increasing Dominion's low-income financial ***** istance by $100 million through 2038.
• The commitments include a $100 million workforce ‌development fund, an annual energy summit in the state and maintaining the current employee headcount there for five years.

#energy #nextera #merger

As electricity demand surges amid AI data center growth, two utility companies stand out. NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE) and Constellation Energy (NASDAQ: CEG) are both incredibly strong businesses, but are taking different approaches to this new chapter in North American power.
NextEra is both a traditional utility provider and a powerhouse in renewable energy. It is planning to spend $94 billion through 2030 in an aggressive push to build out its footprint. In May, the energy giant announced an all-stock agreement to acquire Dominion Energy. This deal will make NextEra the world's largest utility business, but the megamerger is facing intense regulatory scrutiny.
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The company's dividend yield is holding strong at over 3%. The stock has risen just 2% this year. NextEra is a reliable income producer, but could see substantial growth through the early 2030s.
Constellation's approach is completely different from NextEra's. Constellation is the largest nuclear power operator in the U.S. It's also an independent power producer, meaning it sells electricity on the open market and not through a regulated utility model. This gives it greater pricing volatility, but potentially more upside.

#energy #flashing

NextEra Energy says an artificial intelligence (AI)–driven dispatch and outage-scheduling tool has saved its customers more than $20 million so far this year. Santee Cooper expects a custom AI weather-forecasting model to help it avoid spot-market purchases that can cost $100,000 an hour during extreme weather. Both utilities say the tools moved from concept to production in a matter of weeks, not years.The two companies detailed their AI deployments during a Sept. 2 virtual media roundtable hosted by Google Cloud, alongside Raiford Smith, the company's global director of power and energy industry. The session focused on Gemini Enterprise, Google Cloud's platform for building and deploying AI agents, and framed both utilities as evidence that AI in the sector has moved beyond generic chatbots and into tools built for specific, high-stakes operational decisions."Utilities are being asked to deliver greater reliability, lower costs, and a grid ready for what comes next," said Rich Argentieri, president of NextEra ***** ytics. Tami Wilson, vice president and chief financial officer of Santee Cooper, described the shift in similar terms, saying her utility is moving away from "legacy, clunky, ***** bersome processes" toward AI-driven financial and load forecasting to save time and money.
Argentieri walked through NextEra's Grid Composer platform, which the company built on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and rolled out across Florida Power and Light's (FPL's) generating fleet. The platform pulls together real-time telemetry, load data, and generation profiles—what Argentieri estimated at roughly half a trillion data points a day—into a single model that compares manual dispatch decisions against an AI-optimized alternative.NextEra built the first version of the tool in less than 12 weeks, according to Argentieri. Since then, he said, the optimized dispatch and outage scheduling it enables have produced "over $20 million of savings to our customers" so far this year. NextEra has since made the underlying tools available to other utilities through a Google Cloud marketplace product it calls Optos, with Optos Composer—the version built for market and ***** et optimization—unifying generation, fuel, maintenance, trading, reserves, and storage decisions that Argentieri said have traditionally been managed by separate, siloed teams."All of those teams very much traditionally siloed. And not only the people, but all the data and the processes that go into that," Argentieri said, describing generation, transmission, and trading functions that rarely shared data before. Bringing those functions onto a single platform, he said, has let the company avoid "suboptimal decisions" and given teams visibility into how choices in one area affect costs elsewhere in the system.Argentieri also pointed to field applications. FPL technicians—he estimated 85% to 90% of the company's workforce—now use voice-activated tools to pull torque specifications or work-order gu

Fervo Energy (NASDAQ:FRVO), an enhanced geothermal power developer and independent power producer, closed at $19.75, up 28.41%. Pre-market, the company said it signed a 396-megawatt power purchase agreement with Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, and investors are watching next quarter's earnings and project milestones. Trading volume reached 35.0M shares, coming in about 851% above its three-month average of 3.7M shares. Fervo Energy IPO'd in 2026 and has fallen 46% since going public.
S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) closed at 7,633, down 0.70%, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) finished at 26,100, down 1.03%. Among utility-scale geothermal power generation and geothermal technology peers, Ormat Technologies (NYSE:ORA) closed at $107.33, up 5.23%, and NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) closed at $82.91, up 0.69%, highlighting stronger interest in clean-power names tied to data-center demand.
Fervo Energy shares soared 28% after announcing a major 396-MW purchase agreement with Google, providing visibility into potential revenue for years to come from a top-tier customer. Google will also have the option to expand the deal by 600 MW, bringing it to nearly 1 GW in 2030.
Overall, the deal seems like a natural pairing. Fervo can begin selling power to Google in 2028 from its Cape Station project in Utah, while the company tries to build an artificial intelligence data center in the state. Though Google still has to jump through all the regulatory hurdles to build a data center there, Fervo's 24/7 carbon-free, thermal energy would be an ideal solution for the tech behemoth.
That said, Fervo's projects are still in progress, and Google's rapid data center build-out could decelerate due to any type of AI slowdown, so investors need to note that volatility is unavoidable in this virtually pre-revenue stock, especially as it will be under pressure to supply the amount of power needed in just a few years.

#NASDAQ

Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE) generates, stores, transmits, distributes, and sells electric power to retail and wholesale customers in North America. The company has a market cap of $170.7 billion and operates through Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) and NEER segments. NextEra generates electricity from wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and other clean energy ******* ets.
Companies with a market cap of $10 billion or more are typically referred to as "large-cap stocks." NEE fits squarely into that category, with its market cap exceeding this threshold and reflecting its substantial size and influence in the regulated electric utilities industry.
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Donald Trump is accidentally overseeing a massive buildout of the country's renewable energy capacity and infrastructure. Not only are investments in renewable technologies soaring to new highs, the national energy grid is rapidly transforming to accommodate an increasingly solar- and wind-powered energy mix.
Despite massive rollbacks of Biden- and Obama-era clean energy incentives and financial supports, investment in clean energy tech keeps soaring to new heights, buoyed by market forces far outside of the federal government's control. Clean energy capital expenditures already reached $74 billion in the first half of 2026, and they're on track to reach a record $180 billion by the end of the year, according to fintech firm Crux's State of Clean Energy Finance: 2026 Mid-Year Market Intelligence Report.
"The market is proving resilient," Crux CEO and co-founder Alfred Johnson was recently quoted by Politico's E&E News. "We're seeing a significant amount of investment subsequent to the tax law changes of last year."
The insatiable energy demand coming from data center hyperscalers and the artificial intelligence boom has spurred a tidal wave of investment into all kinds of energy projects, and especially renewables due to their noted advantages when it comes to energy security and affordability. These advantages have been underscored in recent months by extreme volatility in fossil fuel markets thanks to the war in Iran and resultant supply chain vulnerabilities. "Renewables and storage continue to be the fastest way to get new electrons on the grid until additional gas-fired generation can be built," NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum was recently quoted by Reuters.
As a result, we are currently "living in what arguably is one of the best periods to invest in renewables in the US over the last 20 years" according to Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade, chief executive officer of Portuguese electric utilities company EDP. Accordingly, EDP is directing approximately USD $5.3 billion – more than half of its capital expenditures – toward United States renewables projects over the next three years.

#year

NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE) has increased its dividend annually for 31 consecutive years. That's not the longest streak in the utility sector, but it is a pretty impressive accomplishment just the same. The dividend yield is an attractive 2.8%, which is well above the roughly 1% on offer from the S&P 500 index (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC). But the big story here is that NextEra Energy doesn't plan to change its dividend policy after it buys peer Dominion Energy (NYSE: D). If you are interested in nuclear power, you should do a deep dive on NextEra Energy today. Here's a primer.
If you are just looking at the stock, a $1,000 investment will buy you 11 shares of NextEra Energy. That gets you in on the 2.8% yield backed by a steadily growing dividend. But you are really buying a business, and that business is highly attractive. On the nuclear front, the acquisition of Dominion will make NextEra the second-largest nuclear energy company in North America. That's very good, noting that nuclear power is increasingly being looked to as a reliable, clean energy source. With electricity demand expected to increase by 60% between 2025 and 2045, NextEra will be well-positioned.
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That said, being number two in nuclear is just a small part of the story. NextEra is already the world's largest utility by market cap. It will be even bigger after the deal is consummated, giving it even greater access to the capital markets. And it will be the number one in total generation, renewable generation, gas generation, and battery storage, as well. You may buy NextEra Energy for its nuclear position, but you are also getting an industry-dominant business.
There's no reason to believe that NextEra Energy's dividend streak is at risk. And, in fact, the company actually expects the Dominion acquisition to improve its earnings growth outlook. So, future dividend growth looks even more secure than before the deal was announced. A $1,000 investment here could lead to a lifetime of reliable, growing dividends.

#energy #Dividend #nuclear #well

Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE) generates, stores, transmits, distributes, and sells electric power to retail and wholesale customers in North America. The company has a market cap of $185.2 billion and operates through Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) and NEER segments. NextEra generates electricity from wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and other clean energy ***** ets.
The electricity supplier's shares have rallied the broader market over the past year, growing 25.2% compared to the S&P 500 Index's ($SPX) 16.3% surge. Moreover, in 2026, the stock has risen nearly 11.2%, outperforming the SPX's 8.5% rise as well.
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#energy #company #Stock #electricity

GEV's $176B backlog positions it as the premium AI infrastructure bet; NEE trades at 22x forward earnings with 8%+ EPS growth through 2032.
NextEra's Duane Arnold nuclear restart, backed by a 25-year Google PPA, targets Q1 2029 and anchors its long-term AI power strategy.
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GE Vernova (NYSE:GEV) and NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) reported June-quarter results within 48 hours of each other. GEV sells the turbines, transformers, and grid gear every hyperscaler needs. NextEra owns the megawatts, the interconnects, and a Florida utility that hyperscalers want to plug into. Two ways to buy the same AI power bottleneck.
GE Vernova posted Q2 revenue of $11.10 billion, up 21.8% year over year, with bookings of $24.2 billion and a $176 billion backlog. Electrification revenue jumped 68%, and $2.7 billion of that came from data center orders in the quarter alone. CEO Scott Strazik told investors GEV is "on track to deliver 20 GW of annual gas turbine output in the third quarter of 2026, with 24 GW in 2028" and 30 GW by 2030. Wind guidance includes roughly $400 million in EBITDA losses.

#nextera #quarter #backlog

XLU trades at 23x earnings, which is above its 17x historical norm, as Constellation and Vistra add direct AI data center power pricing exposure.
VPU delivers similar returns to XLU with broader diversification, while RSPU prevents any one stock from dominating the way NextEra does at 14%.
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Utility stocks returned to focus in 2026 as artificial intelligence data center demand strained the power grid. That backdrop has pushed investors back into sector funds like the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLU), the Vanguard Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:VPU), the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:RSPU), and the actively managed Virtus Reaves Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:UTES).
XLU sits at the center of the conversation. The fund carries a 0.08% net expense ratio, has climbed roughly 8% year to date, and pays a 2.6% dividend yield. The question for investors is whether that combination still offers the stability the sector is known for after a re-rating driven more by AI narratives than by regulated returns.

XLU trades at 23x earnings, which is above its 17x historical norm, as Constellation and Vistra add direct AI data center power pricing exposure.
VPU delivers similar returns to XLU with broader diversification, while RSPU prevents any one stock from dominating the way NextEra does at 14%.
Don't wait: the **** yst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks. See the full list FREE now.
Utility stocks returned to focus in 2026 as artificial intelligence data center demand strained the power grid. That backdrop has pushed investors back into sector funds like the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLU), the Vanguard Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:VPU), the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:RSPU), and the actively managed Virtus Reaves Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:UTES).
XLU sits at the center of the conversation. The fund carries a 0.08% net expense ratio, has climbed roughly 8% year to date, and pays a 2.6% dividend yield. The question for investors is whether that combination still offers the stability the sector is known for after a re-rating driven more by AI narratives than by regulated returns.

Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers are popping up everywhere, to the point where it's becoming a source of political backlash. Yet while the debate over where to build data centers rages on, one thing remains very certain.
As AI data centers proliferate, electricity demand will continue to rise as well. While this trend could bode well for utility stocks across the board, it could serve as a strong long-term catalyst for the following three electric utility stocks in particular: Constellation Energy Group (NASDAQ: CEG), Entergy (NYSE: ETR), and NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE).
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Spun off from utilities giant Exelon in 2022, Constellation Energy Group provides electricity and natural gas to a variety of customers, including regulated utility companies. What makes Constellation especially interesting is its high exposure to nuclear power.
That is, the company owns and operates 15 nuclear power plants, primarily in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. In the past, nuclear power has been a controversial industry, but in recent years, public and private stakeholders have recognized nuclear power's value as a scalable, low-carbon energy source, with nuclear power plants a viable "green" alternative to coal- and natural gas-fired power plants.

Electricity is in high demand right now, as the world increasingly shifts toward cleaner power sources and new power-hungry technologies take center stage. The numbers are quite shocking. Between 2005 and 2025, electricity demand rose 10%. Between 2025 and 2045, demand is expected to rise by 60%.
That's a step change in the demand that is likely to power years of growth for the utility industry. Big utilities, like NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE), are getting a lot of attention. But don't overlook smaller players like high-yield Dividend King Black Hills (NYSE: BKH).
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The big story today is NextEra Energy's planned acquisition of Dominion Energy (NYSE: D). NextEra is already one of the world's largest utilities, so this deal will cement its position at the top of the utility pack. But the real story is that it is leaning into demand growth. The market is well aware of this, and the stock's dividend yield is 2.8%, only slightly higher than the 2.6% utility average. It's not a bad stock, but you can do better on the income front and still get attractive growth opportunities with Black Hills and its 3.8% yield.
For its part, Black Hills plans to merge with Northwestern Energy (NASDAQ: NWE). The two companies operate in the same region, so the pairing makes both geographic and financial sense. Notably, the combined business will be nearly twice as large, and earnings growth is projected to rise from 4% to 6% for the two individually to 5% to 7% combined. That's a very attractive growth rate for a high-yield utility.

Nobody likes to pay full price for anything if they can avoid it and Vertiv (VRT) just might offer a compelling discount. No, I don't think the green flag is being dropped by the fundamentals. And while the Barchart Technical Opinion indicator coincidentally rates VRT stock as a 48% Buy, I'm more focused on how market psychology may impact the mechanical gyrations of price discovery.
Basically, my presupposition centers on mean reversion. Specifically, human beings tend to react more or less uniformly to persistent losses. Given the reactive nature of the equities market, an intrepid speculator can get ahead of a potential contrarian rebound, thus scalping relatively quick profits.
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Calendar spreads are an option trade that involves selling a short-term option and buying a longer-term option with the same strike.
Traders can use calls or puts and they can be set up to be neutral, bullish or bearish with neutral being the most common.
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Here's Why NextEra Energy Stock Might Be a Great Options Trade Hiding in Plain Sight

For those who love options trading, NextEra Energy (NEE) might very well be considered an ideal candidate. That might sound strange at first glance because of how unsexy the core business is. After all, why bother spending too much time on NEE stock when you have so many other hot names, such as semiconductor companies or AI playsz, at your disposal?
Further, the soft performance of NEE stock would seem to negate any excitement. On a year-to-date basis, shares are up 9%, which is decent but not particularly jaw-dropping. Plus, its recent print is quite shallow, losing 0.43% in the trailing five sessions. NextEra has failed to convince the Barchart Technical Opinion screener, which rates NEE as a Weak Sell.
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When it comes to mergers and acquisitions, one of the big questions is always, "Is it better to buy the acquirer or the target?" That's particularly interesting with regard to NextEra Energy's (NYSE: NEE) planned purchase of Dominion Energy (NYSE: D). The key factor is the long approval process that normally accompanies large utility mergers. Here's a look at this merger and which of these two stocks is the better dividend option right now.
NextEra Energy is one of the world's largest utilities and also one of the world's largest solar and wind companies. That said, on the regulated utility side of the business, it primarily operates in just one state, Florida. That's been a net positive for years, as the Sunshine State has benefited from in-migration. However, scale is increasingly important in the utility industry.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Dominion Energy is a multi-state utility that has slimmed down in recent years, becoming primarily a regulated electric utility. It operates in three states: Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Notably, in Virginia, it has a regulator-granted monopoly in one of the world's most important data center markets. That sets the company up to benefit from the growth of artificial intelligence (AI).
Essentially, NextEra Energy is expanding its geographic reach while, at the same time, leaning into an expected increase in electricity demand. It looks like a reasonable move, noting that Dominion's operating region is just up the East Coast from Florida. Neither company needs this deal to go through, but it is expected to be immediately accretive to NextEra Energy's business and to improve its growth outlook.