This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising electricity bills to developing renewable energy.
Last October, Georgia Power approached regulators with what it said was a crisis. Unless they did something soon, they discovered, the growing demand for electricity would outpace production sometime in the winter of 2025. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and other state leaders had been courting data centers and new manufacturing plants for some time, and it was all catching up to the aging power grid.
The Georgia Public Service Commission, the elected body tasked with regulating the utility company, had approved Georgia Power’s long-term grid plan, which the company makes every three years, in 2022. Since then, the company said, its projections for the growth of electricity demand through 2030 had increased by a factor of 17.
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