Georgia Power names new CEO as utility embarks on huge expansion
Georgia Power’s chairman, president and chief executive, Kim Greene, is moving into a new role at its corporate parent, Southern Co., where she will be tasked with guiding the Southeast energy giant’s expansion into the next decade.
Greene, who has championed Georgia Power’s buildout to support data centers, will become the president of Southern Company Operations, a strategic and operational division, the company said Friday.
Greene will be in charge of Southern’s entire grid that spans from Georgia to Mississippi and will oversee its power plants, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure as well as research and development and commercial operations.
Stan Connally, Southern’s chief operating officer, will step into Greene’s role at Georgia Power, starting Jan. 1.
Southern is known for moving its top executives to other parts of the company, particularly if they could be in the running for top roles. Connally, for example, was the president and CEO of Gulf Power, now owned by Florida-based NextEra Energy, and Greene headed up Southern Company Gas.
Southern also is known for taking a “hands off” approach toward the individual electric companies and other power divisions that it owns, allowing management at each utility to manage their own power grid and relationship with state regulators, lawmakers and the community. That structure will remain the same, but Southern’s operations overall will be more centralized.
“We’re in a transformative period for Southern Company, with tremendous growth and change creating new opportunities across our business,” said Chris Womack, Southern’s chairman, president and CEO.
Besides Georgia Power, Southern owns electric companies in Alabama and Mississippi. It also operates a wholesale power unit and Southern Nuclear. It also owns the nation’s largest gas-only distribution company.
Southern is shaping much of its growth around artificial intelligence and data centers. For example, Georgia Power and Alabama Power earlier this year received $26.5 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy — the largest federal energy loan package ever awarded — to support a slew of new power generation and transmission upgrades for an influx of energy-hungry data centers.
Google, a major data center operator, has agreed to pay a premium for the electricity and carbon-emission credits coming from planned upgrades to Georgia Power’s nuclear reactors, a move that now is being replicated with other electric companies.
In Southern’s second-quarter earnings call, Womack made it clear to Wall Street analysts that growing the pipeline for data centers, which require unprecedented amounts of electricity to operate, is a key strategy for the company going forward.
The announcement comes days before the midterm elections, in which data centers and utility bills have become a flashpoint nationwide. Georgia Power and its regulator also have been under fire for hiking customer bills six times in the last three years, a move that cost two Georgia Public Service Commissioners their seats last year.
The utility has taken steps to freeze base rates for its customers and to lower bills overall as part of an agreement with the PSC. It also is embarking on an unprecedented build out of its power grid, adding a large number of gas-fired power plants and some solar and battery storage, mostly to support data center growth.
That natural gas-heavy expansion has also raised alarms from environmental groups concerned about planet warming-emissions from the new power plants.
The company said it has protections in place to shield customers from paying for electricity and infrastructure that data center operators will be using.
“To their credit, I think they are focused on affordability and the infrastructure build out associated with data center development,” said Paul Patterson, a utility analyst with Glenrock Associates LLC. “And I think they have to be focused on doing things that really work.”
In other moves, Sterling Spainhour, executive vice president and chief legal officer, will also head up Southern’s technology organization. Sloane Drake, executive vice president and chief human resources officer, will assume responsibility for systemwide training.
A note of disclosure
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