Georgia Power customers could see some relief in escalating power costs if a bill passed out of a state Senate committee Tuesday gets approved by the entire Georgia General Assembly and signed by the governor.
The bill forbids the power company from forcing residential and small business customers to pay increased costs expected from providing electricity to data centers. The amount needed to run a data center currently outpaces what Georgia Power can provide with its infrastructure.
One of those data centers is planned for Bartow County but there are currently 11 planned for Georgia but many other proposals are submitted. The proposed Bartow facility is a 2.2 million-square-foot campus of six buildings near Adairsville. A data center is planned for a 114-acre plot in Rome. Other areas where data centers are planned include Social Circle Hampton, Newton County, Coweta County, and Atlanta.
Sen. Chuck Hufstetler (R-Rome) sponsored Senate Bill (S.B.) 34. During the committee hearing, he said that consumers are footing the bill for the additional power that data centers use.
Georgia Power opposes the bill with Aaron Mitchell, vice president of pricing and planning for the power company, stating it’s unnecessary. He said the Public Service Commission (PSC) which governs rate hikes for utility companies, adopted rule changes in January that prevent Georgia Power from passing costs of serving new larger customers on to other smaller users.
Hufstetler said that isn’t enough and wants to ensure that “history doesn’t repeat itself.” Bobby Baker, a former member of the PSC, said there are numerous loopholes in the new rules and that there are no guaranteed protections.
The history of Georgia Power rate hikes has customers fuming. The power giant issued six rate increases over the past two years. Those amounted to an additional 37 percent in electrical costs for customers, consisting of mostly residential and small business users.
Part of those rate hikes came when the power company got the PSC’s blessing to pass on the increased costs of construction projects to customers. Rates began increasing last spring by about $9 per customer as the second nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle went online in April 2024. That was Unit 4, which was completed after 14 years of construction. The other one, Unite 3 went online in 2020. The PSC approved that rate increase in December 2023.
The PSC also approved a five-year financial plan from Georgia Power allowing incremental rate increases every six months to meet ongoing budget demands.
The PSC previously approved a rate increase in May 2023 to allow Georgia Power to recoup fuel costs. It underbudgeted costs for coal and natural gas so the PSC allowed the company to take on an average of $16 more a month to customers’ bills for the next three years.
The PSC also approved a $1.8 billion rate hike in December 2022, which raised the average residential bill by $3.60 a month.
SB 34 passed out of the Senate Regulated Industries Committee in an 8-5 vote. It was sent to the Senate Rules Committee for a floor vote, which hasn’t been scheduled.