Georgia Power Company’s request to grow its grid by two-thirds of its current capacity within a decade to accommodate booming data center development will be debated during three days of public hearings in Atlanta before the Georgia Public Service Commission beginning Tuesday.
The company, Georgia’s largest and only rate-regulated utility with 2.8 million customers, plans to spend $15 billion to add 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new capacity—enough to power nine million homes—by 2035 under its 10-year Integrated Resource Plan approved by the commission in July.
While the plan is a broad outline, the specific proposal on the Dec. 10-12 docket is Georgia Power’s request to add up to 8,500 MWs between 2029 and 2031, the largest projected percentage increase in electricity demand over the next five years in any state nationwide except Texas, according to a November Grid Strategies analysis….