LISTEN: Georgia Power and staff for the Georgia Public Service Commission have reached a tentative promise to cut household power bills. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
Georgia Power and staff for the Georgia Public Service Commission have reached a tentative agreement aimed at quelling some of the anxiety about rising power bills connected to the data center boom in the state by promising to cut household power bills.
The gist: Three years from now you might see your power bill cut by $100 a year. In return, Georgia Power would get 6 Gigawatts of new, carbon emitting power generation.
The deal was announced only half an hour before the Wednesday hearing on Georgia Power’s request to add to their ability to make electricity by about 70% by adding 9 gigawatts of capacity. The utility currently has 14.55 GW of capacity.
A small number of protesters, vocally angry about the deal, were forced to leave the hearing shortly after it was gaveled in.
Georgia Power has said for most of the year that it needs the new capacity to fully capitalize on the boom in data centers around the state.
But in their written testimony to the elected members of the PSC, the commission’s professional staff have said the projected need isn’t backed by signed and sealed data center contracts. They had recommended Georgia Power only be granted authority to add the fraction of the new capacity that is backed by the contracts or else household customers could find themselves asked to pay billions of dollars for power generation that ultimately isn’t needed.
The late stipulated agreement between the PSC staff and Georgia Power would give the utility what it wants in return for spending over half a billion dollars in projected data center revenue to cut the average household power bill by at least $100 a year.
But because of previous haggling between the PSC and Georgia Power on capping power bill rates, the new cuts wouldn’t kick in until 2029.
“Staff believes the stipulation strikes a balance between enabling Georgia Power to serve new data centers and safeguarding existing customers from premature or excessive investment,” said Robert Trokey, Director of the PSC Electric Unit.
Trokey went on to clarify that Georgia Power has agreed that even if the data center revenues don’t meet projections, the utility will still act as a “backstop” and keep the baseline downward pressure on power rates.
By the same token, if revenues go higher, then the cut to bills could be deeper.
Once environmental advocates had the time to scrutinize the deal, they were dubious.
“What they're not revealing is the new power plants that Georgia Power is requesting will effectively cause a minimum $20 monthly base rate increase on its customers’ bills, based on the PSC staff’s own analysis,” said Southern Alliance for Clean Energy director Stephen A. Smith.
Smith argues that the revenue-based cut to bills would only alleviate a part of the rate hike accompanying the construction of new power plants.
“All that happened today was a temporary agreement that the base rate increase might be reduced from $20 to $12 a month for three years before reverting back to the higher base rate as time goes on,” Smith said.
If agreed to by the current PSC, the agreement could pave the way for Georgia Power to add about 6 GW of generation capacity via natural gas turbines, adding hundreds of thousands of tons of new carbon dioxide emissions, something to which newly elected Democratic member of the PSC Peter Hubbard said he is opposed.
"I do not believe we should approve any new fossil fuel generation," Hubbard said at a press conference ahead of a hearing on Georgia Power’s request Wednesday. “It will raise power bills, it will harm public health, it will exacerbate climate change, and because there are better alternatives.”
The PSC will vote on Georgia Power’s request on Dec. 19, 13 days before Peter Hubbard and his fellow newly elected Democrat Alicia Johnson take their seats on the commission.
