Data centers need a lot more juice. Georgia consumers fear being squeezed.
Seated at the dais in the Georgia Public Service Commission’s low-slung hearing room, Chairman Jason Shaw seemed perplexed.
It was a Tuesday in January 2024.
Only six months earlier, Georgia Power had completed the first new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle, bringing enough electricity online for hundreds of thousands of homes. A year before that, the utility received approval to add thousands of megawatts of power to its fleet. The company wasn’t expected to ask approval for more until 2025.
But to Shaw’s right, a panel of Georgia Power experts explained that they’d soon need to generate much more electricity.
“I’ll be honest … I’m still kind of scratching my head on how we ended up here,” Shaw said.
Soon, the reason was clear: data centers.
The server-packed warehouses are the nerve centers of artificial intelligence and our digital lives. And right now, there is no hotter destination for them than Atlanta.
Last year, the metro area was the country’s top market for data center leasing.
Data Surge: An AJC series
Data center development is surging in Georgia with metro Atlanta becoming the fastest growing market for server farms in the U.S. and one of the top locations in the world. But the data center boom has raised many questions about land use, the resources the complexes consume and the risk of costs being spread to other Georgia residents and businesses. This story delves into the power and water demands of data centers and the deliberations of policymakers about this rising industry.
Part 1: Why mall-sized data centers are popping up across Georgia
Part 2: Data centers become new flashpoint for local controversy in Georgia
Part 3: Data Center Alley has lessons to teach. Is metro Atlanta listening?
Part 4: As data centers flock to Georgia, state lawmakers haven’t pumped the brakes
Part 5: Data centers’ thirst for power and water places Georgia on edge
The data center industry says the facilities create jobs and dramatically boost local tax revenues, allowing communities to invest in projects that benefit all residents. But as they flock to the Peach State, they are bringing their enormous energy and water demands with them, raising questions about how they’ll affect other customers.
Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for national trade association Data Center Coalition, called the facilities a “win-win” for local governments.
“Data centers come in and they pump a lot back into the community without draining services,” Diorio said. For projects of their scope, they don’t overcrowd roads with trucks or stress school systems.
For the last year and a half, their electricity needs have dominated PSC proceedings involving Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric utility. They’ve been a hot topic at the General Assembly, spurring bills and special study committees. City councils and county commissions have seen packed hearing rooms on rezoning requests.
The industry, utilities and regulators have pledged data centers will pay their fair share of the infrastructure costs they incur.
Not everyone is so sure.
“They get first priority, and they build redundancy,” said Roy McGee, a Coweta County retiree living near a site slated for one of Georgia’s largest data center proposals. “What happens to the rest of us? We’re going to be sitting there sweating in the summertime when their load peaks.”
Energy worries
Data center operators consider many factors in deciding where to locate.
They need land to build on and water to cool their servers. Tax breaks, like the ones that exist in Georgia, can also help sweeten the deal.
But at the very top of the list is electricity.
“They’re starting with power first,” Gil Shearouse, executive director of the Douglasville-Douglas County Water & Sewer Authority, told a state House Special Committee studying data centers in July. “Everything else kind of flows from there.”
That’s because they need lots of it. Data centers use 10 to 50 times as much energy as a typical office building with the same square footage, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Ones used to train artificial intelligence models are the most energy intensive, said Ahmed Saeed, an assistant professor of computer science at Georgia Tech.
“AI doesn’t sleep,” Saeed said.
Neither do hospital systems, 911 emergency services, banking platforms or the thousands of other daily necessities that require data centers, said Jordan Sadler, senior vice president of public and private investor relations for Digital Realty.
“There’s so many critical things that you don’t want to go down,” he said.
Some of the largest data centers eyeing Georgia need more than 1,000 megawatts of power, Georgia Power’s “large load” reports show. That’s roughly equal to the output of one of the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta.
In 2022, before the latest data center surge started, Georgia Power projected its winter peak electricity demand would only grow by about 400 megawatts by 2031. Now, its most recent forecasts show peak demand growing by 8,200 megawatts by then — 20 times earlier projections — and nearly all from data centers.
Meeting that demand, if it comes, will require a massive expansion of Georgia Power’s generation fleet and transmission infrastructure. So far, the utility plans to lean heavily on fossil fuels to supply electrons.
In late July, Georgia Power proposed adding roughly 10,000 megawatts of new capacity in just five years. That would mean boosting the utility’s generation fleet by 42%, an expansion that’s unprecedented in company history.
About 4,000 of those megawatts would come from battery storage, including a small amount of solar. But the bulk of the new-generation muscle would come from burning gas: both units built by the company and power purchased from existing ones.
