Democrats are set to take control of Georgia’s Public Service Commission for the first time in 30 years, promising closer scrutiny of Georgia Power, action on high household energy bills and greater transparency over the state’s data centre boom.
Three of the commission’s five members will be Democrats from January after Peter Hubbard won re-election this week. Shelia Edwards and Alicia Johnson are the other Democratic commissioners.
The commission regulates utilities including Georgia Power, the state’s largest electricity provider. Its work has attracted growing attention as power bills have risen and data centres have increased demand for electricity.
Hubbard said one of his first priorities would be to establish an affordability docket, involving hearings into the reasons for high bills and possible ways to reduce costs for customers.
He said the new majority would also closely examine upcoming Georgia Power requests involving additional energy generation and changes to customer rates.
“There’s a long laundry list of things that need to be looked into,” Hubbard said. “And so we’ll have to triage, in fact, and decide how best to move forward.”
Any effect on bills is likely to take time. Kristin Phillips, an associate professor at Emory University who studies energy burden and the commission, said the immediate impact was more likely to be seen in regulatory decisions than in household finances.
“We may not be able to expect immediate effects on our wallets,” she said. “But I think we can expect immediate change in the types of decisions that are made.”
Scrutiny of Georgia Power’s data centre deals
Affordability was a central issue in the campaigns that led to the Democratic majority, according to Brionté McCorkle of Georgia Conservation Voters, which supported the candidates and highlighted the commission elections.
“We knew that we had to connect the dots between energy and affordability,” McCorkle said. “It’s not just this obscure regulatory body like it used to be treated. Its decisions directly affect household budgets, communities, health, and our energy future.”
Georgia Power has argued that higher revenues from data centres will more than cover the infrastructure needed to serve them, helping to limit increases for residential and small business customers. The utility refers to this as “downward pressure” – meaning that data centre income is expected to offset some increases, rather than reduce bills outright.
The company recently repeated that commitment as part of an agreement to supply a new OpenAI data centre. Georgia Power said the deal would provide $15 a month in downward pressure for what it describes as a typical residential customer.
The utility has also attributed a temporary rate freeze approved last year to increased data centre revenue. Some campaigners criticised the process, saying Georgia Power announced the freeze before a commission hearing could examine its financial claims and assess whether ordinary customers were fully protected from the costs.
Transparency is expected to be another priority for the incoming majority. The OpenAI contract was fully redacted, with only a summary released publicly after approval, while details of service agreements, energy purchases and construction costs are often withheld from public filings on the grounds of trade secrecy.
“I absolutely think transparency is potentially one of the biggest impacts here,” Phillips said. “It has been often on advocates to push on the way that the PSC communicates about the decisions that it’s making, and I’m hoping that there will be more clarity and transparency.”
Chris Womack, chief executive of Southern Company, which owns Georgia Power, acknowledged the importance of affordability during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Thursday. He said he was confident the utility could address the issue with the new commissioners.
“If you look at what we have been doing with rate freezes, with benefits, with how we are providing benefits from growth to customers — existing customers — as well as to the communities, we think that’s a strong platform to stand on,” Womack said.
The Democrats have pledged to examine Georgia Power’s next rate-setting process, due in 2028, as well as its long-term plans for generating and delivering electricity and its forecasts for future demand.
Hubbard has also proposed a rate case for the state’s natural gas utilities, which he said had not undergone one for more than a decade. He said the four-year period of Democratic control would be used to pursue longer-term changes to Georgia’s energy policy.
“We’ll continue with an agenda next year and the year after that to take advantage of this four-year period when we have the majority and can push for long-lasting reforms and shifting the direction of the state in terms of energy,” Hubbard said.
