Under the agreement, Constellation will provide equity financing and own a majority equity interest in Bloom Energy Servers at more than 170 sites for customers, including AT&T, the City of Hartford in Connecticut, and Walmart.

The projects require no upfront capital from customers, who will purchase the power generated by the fuel cells under 15-year power purchase agreements.

‘Walmart currently has more than 40 installations with Bloom Energy, and through this partnership with Constellation, we are looking forward to expanding our Bloom deployments into new territories,’ says David Ozment, senior director of energy at Walmart.

The portfolio of customer projects builds on Exelon’s previous equity investment in 21 MW of Bloom Energy Servers, and supports the growth of Constellation’s distributed energy business, which has more than 300 MW of assets in operation or under development.

Constellation and Bloom Energy plan to complete the installations in phases by the end of 2016. When completed, the fuel cells will produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of more than 32 000 homes.

Through Constellation, customers of these projects also have the option to lock in competitive fixed rates for natural gas and electricity supply, and to implement energy conservation measures and other distributed energy options such as solar.