Data center expansion in Georgia has implications for consumers’ power bills

For more than a year, commissioners on the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) have been repeating a reassuring claim: they’ve put rules in place to shield Georgia Power’s residential customers from the soaring costs of grid expansion driven by the state’s data center boom.

Georgia Power has been echoing the same message. It’s a tidy narrative: booming economic development, covered costs and protected customers.

And yet, regulators and Georgia Power are already allowing costs tied to the data center boom to flow directly onto residential bills.

This does not come as a surprise to those who follow PSC proceedings. No court would allow corporate attorneys to fund the judges who are deciding their cases. Yet under state law, Georgia Power’s lawyers are allowed to donate tens of thousands of dollars annually to commissioners deciding their cases, according to news reports.

The results of such donations are difficult to ignore: a pattern of deference to the utility in PSC proceedings, utility profits set far above industry norms, and six rate increases totaling 40% in the past three years, including 25% on May 1, 2024, for two new reactors at Plant Vogtle, the largest rate increase in state history.

How is data center cost-shifting occurring?

Patty Durand is the founder of Georgians for Affordable Energy, a nonprofit that seeks fair utility rates and a clean energy future. (Courtesy)

First, in a Feb. 17 filing with the Georgia PSC, Georgia Power outlined costs tied to gas plant expansions for data centers at Plant Bowen in Bartow County and Plant Wansley in Heard County, infrastructure built specifically to meet surging data center demand.

Although May hearings revealed that data centers are not paying for these fuel costs, the commission approved the proposal as written. Consequently, on June 1, Georgia Power’s residential and small business customers began paying those data center costs.

Second, at a Feb. 24 hearing before the Georgia Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee, when a senior Georgia Power executive was asked by the committee chair whether Georgia Power was collecting large down payments from gas plants being built for data centers, he said no, because “The bulk system can be enjoyed by all customers, even a new customer that we don’t know about” (1:28:46 in the video).

That leads me to believe Georgia Power plans to spread construction costs of the five new natural gas plants being built for data centers across all customer rates.

Third, on Feb. 25, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a historic loan package of more than $26 billion to Southern Company, with about $22 billion allocated to Georgia Power. These funds were announced as support for the major grid expansion underway in Georgia for data centers. While the loan was framed as a way to “save customers money,” there is no commitment that data centers, and not residential consumers, will cover the debt associated with this enormous loan.

The role of Georgia’s legislative leadership is critical here. In 2025, it was evident that legislation was needed to protect residential and small business utility customers from the high cost of expanding the electricity grid for data centers. Legislation in the form of Senate Bill 34 was introduced that directed utilities to ensure that grid expansion costs tied to data centers are not spread to all customers.

In 2025, that bill passed out of the Regulated Industries and Utilities committee, but Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, blocked that bill in his committee. In 2026, the legislation made it to the Senate, but this time Lt. Gov. Burt Jones blocked the bill and it never received a vote.

Brass also blocked legislation to reestablish the Consumers’ Utility Counsel, a role seen as so critical for utility affordability that Georgia is one of only five states without one, and Georgia is the only state in the nation where public interest lawyers engaged in legal proceedings at the PSC have no discovery rights, leaving them unable to compel the production of evidence from the utility.

Legislature had a chance to act. Now, voters can.

It is now clear that Republican leadership would not allow any legislation protecting residential utility customers to pass.

The consequences for Georgians are already coming into focus and they will be severe. Grid expansion tied to data center growth will more than double the size of Georgia’s grid. Although costs are hidden behind sweeping trade secrets, we know from PSC analysis and SEC filings that it exceeds $35 billion, a sum so large that few people understand future rate impacts.

Many Democrats view the decision by Republican leadership not to advance data center legislation as a major vulnerability heading into elections. After years of rising utility bills, high profits for Georgia Power, and no consumer protections, the issue is emerging as a central point of contrast between the parties.

Since the 2010 loss of the consumer utility counsel in Georgia, residential rates have increased three times faster than industrial rates, which are far below the national average and are a key factor in why data centers are flocking to Georgia.

After two consecutive years in which Republican state leaders declined to enact consumer protections against data centers, and 10 years in which they declined to replace the consumer utility counsel, the question of utility bills, consumer protections and data centers is now moving from the Legislature to the ballot box.