Georgia Today: Report on Georgia Power energy request casts doubt; Next Generation 911

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB Newsroom. On today's episode, a new report casts doubt on Georgia Power's request to add more electrical generation capacity to power new data centers. Georgia is one of the states still behind on modernizing its 911 system, and with a week to go before Christmas, should Georgians be worried about their packages arriving on time?

Chris Gaffney: This is a five or six-week surge period, so there are going to be facilities that struggle. 

Orlando Montoya: Today is Thursday, Dec. 18th. I'm Orlando Montoya, and this is Georgia Today. 

Story 1:

Orlando Montoya: A new report is casting more doubt on Georgia Power's request for a data center-driven increase in generation capacity. The State Public Service Commission is expected to decide on that request tomorrow. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more. 

Grant Blankenship: Non-profits Greenlink Analytics and Science for Georgia ran publicly available data center information through the type of modeling Georgia Power used to come up with its requests for just under 10 gigawatts of new generation. Amy Sharma leads Science for Georgia. She says over hundreds of thousands of so-called Monte Carlo simulations, the modeling returned... 

Amy Sharma: "...a 1 in 500 chance." 

Grant Blankenship: That Georgia Power's predictions were accurate. 

Amy Sharma: Only one in 500 simulations agreed with or exceeded their prediction, and then everything else was lower than their prediction. 

Grant Blankenship: That rhymes with the analysis by PSC staff who testified that data center trends only justify about a third of Georgia Power's request. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon. 

Story 2:

Orlando Montoya: The New York Times has released a recording of a 2020 phone call between President Donald Trump and then Speaker of the Georgia House David Ralston. GPB's Sarah Kallis explains what the implications of the call might be five years later. 

Sarah Kallis: During the call, Trump asked Ralston to call a special legislative session to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Donald Trump: All we need is either of the two, frankly, but the better is the special session because if you agree with us, you can vote the state as a victory for us. 

Sarah Kallis: Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie says that while the phone call isn't likely to have any immediate political implications, it does indicate Trump pressured Georgia officials in 2020. 

Andra Gillespie: I think when people have some distance from it, they're going to look at evidence like this phone call to come out and actually provide an accurate record of what happened. 

Sarah Kallis: A Georgia legal case accusing Trump and 18 others of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election was dropped last month. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis. 

Story 3:

Orlando Montoya: Georgians seeking a marketplace health care plan that starts in January have until Monday, Dec. 15th to sign up for one through Georgia Access, the state's exchange. As of Monday, state officials say 111,000 people had newly enrolled in a Georgia Access plan. That's less than half of new enrollees reported last year. 444,000 people have so far kept their Georgia Access Plan into next year. Even as some monthly premiums have more than doubled due to the expected expiration of federally funded enhanced premium tax credits. 

Story 4:

Orlando Montoya: Georgia is one of a handful of states that have not yet modernized its analog 911 system to what's called next generation 911. The updates promise to improve emergency response times and standardize call data. GPB's Sofi Gratas has more on state lawmakers first steps to adopt the changes. 

Sofi Gratas: Georgia Rep. Chuck Martin chaired a special study committee this fall on funding for next-gen 911. In their report this week are several recommendations. One is that the state should be able to pay for the updates without raising the $1.50 monthly fee added to telephone bills to pay for 911. 

Chuck Martin: That generates somewhere on the order of a quarter billion dollars a year. That's a lot of money. 

Sofi Gratas: Martin says it's still too early to estimate the total cost of modernizing the system. Other states have spent tens of millions of dollars, but that updates will result in savings. Counties and cities will face their own costs. Lawmakers plan to work with them this legislative session on drafting a constitutional amendment on Next-Gen 911 spending that would then go to voters. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas.

Story 5:

Orlando Montoya: The president of Delta Airlines plans to retire at the end of February. The Atlanta-based carrier yesterday credited President Glenn Hounstein with transforming Delta's global network, pricing, and premium strategy over two decades at Delta and nearly a decade as president. The company did not name a new president. The skyline of downtown Macon got a new addition yesterday. The century-old Joseph Neal's department store sign was lit up again. Now as the centerpiece of a brand new mixed-use development, Neal's Lofts. The 95-unit complex is described as the first brand new building constructed in downtown Macon in decades. 

Story 6:

Orlando Montoya: The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation said yesterday it's giving grants to six Metro Atlanta school districts to increase access to sports. The foundation says $6.3 million will go toward things like launching girls' flag football programs and alleviating the cost to participate in sports. In 2024, families spent an average of $1,000 on their child's primary sport in 2024, according to the Aspen Institute. Chris Millman is with AMB Sports and Entertainment, a Blank family business. He spoke with GPB Sports last night. 

Chris Millman: And a lot of these parents have to make a choice, am I going to have my child play sports or am I gonna put food on the table? And ultimately you can probably guess what most parents are choosing to do. So we want to do our part in trying to help these kids play sports. 

Orlando Montoya: These grants will go to public schools in Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, Griffin-Spalding, Gwinnett and Rockdale counties. 

Story 7:

Orlando Montoya: The Georgia High School football championships ended last night with Thomas County Central dominating Gainesville 62-21 to win the Class 5A title at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Senior running back Deuce Lawrence powered the win. 

Announcer: ...And of course, this will be remembered as the Deuce-Lawrence game. 39 carries, 380 yards, blows away the state record by 60 yards, and scores five touchdowns. And here they are. 

Orlando Montoya: The victory caps a historic run for Thomas County Central whose senior class leaves with two state titles and a 53-3 record, the winningest class in program history. 

Caption

A pair of U.S. Postal Service delivery vehicles.

Credit: Nati Harnik / AP

Story 8:

Orlando Montoya: We're a week out from Christmas, and many of you might have packages out for delivery right now. Will they arrive on time? Especially with widely reported U.S. Postal Service delays and service failures in Georgia in 2024, we invited Chris Gaffney, managing director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech, to talk about holiday package delivery. He spoke with me yesterday. I asked him if consumers still should be concerned about USPS problems in Georgia. 

Chris Gaffney: This is a season where I think the consumer is still going to experience some level of disappointment relative to what they see in the rest of the year. The majority of the facilities that USPS has are not fully automated yet, so they're still dependent on people. This time of year, demand is typically up 30 to 50% over what you would normally have and the performance is about 50% worse than it would normally be. On an average time of the year, 5% of shipments don't get where they're supposed to be on time and this year it's 50% more than that. I think we're going to see about the same level of experience as prior years. I have my own anecdotes for friends and family. Overall, ecom volume for home delivery is up 5% this year and you try to surge. This is a five or six week surge period. So there are going to be facilities that struggle. I haven't heard huge issues locally this year like we did last year. 

Orlando Montoya: You mentioned anecdotes and this interview will air on Thursday. Is that too late to get shipments on time for the following Thursday? 

Chris Gaffney: I think for the majority of companies you buy from, free shipping by Christmas is probably no longer an option. I think you're going to need to look for an expedited option. In all honesty, I would like folks to make sure they're getting either Amazon or UPS to do that delivery to have the best shot of getting there by Christmas. 

Orlando Montoya: Let's talk about Amazon and UPS. We're hearing reports, people in our own newsroom seeing that they're getting packages delivered to their homes by people that are not identified as Amazon or UPS, they're just showing up in regular cars, not uniformed Amazon or ups. Is this something that these big shippers do around the holidays, typically to help with the surge? 

Chris Gaffney: They all use it in some respects during the year with companies like Roadie as well as Uber and Lyft, but it is all hands on deck these last couple of weeks. My own Uber driver told me they had the option of delivering packages to your and my home in this last week and I think this is another effort by all the providers to use whatever resources are available to handle this unprecedented surge that we get in this final week that might be 70% greater volume than we would see during a normal week in the year. 

Orlando Montoya: How often do shipments get lost or delayed? 

Chris Gaffney: You know what we would say is most cases the packages aren't lost i mean literally the packages that never make it are less than one percent and that incremental delay is one to three days and most of the year you're not going to sweat it if something's one to 3 days late but this time of year one to three days really matters and i think what we would say is there's science involved in setting those promise dates but the science is mostly assuming what goes on normally, it is not factoring in. These peak challenges that may occur in a hub location. So that's probably the only other point that I think is upsetting my family members. This was supposed to come on Thursday, and it's not here, and it either, it's no clear when it's showing up. That's where people are uncomfortable that I'm not gonna be able to get my cousins or my nephews' gift to them on time. 

Orlando Montoya: That's Chris Gaffney, Managing Director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech. Thanks for speaking with me. 

Chris Gaffney: All right, thanks so much and happy holidays. 

And that's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. We encourage you to visit GPB.org/news if you want to get the latest news from the GPB Newsroom. We always encourage you hit subscribe on this podcast as well. That's something that you can do that's very easy. It only takes a few seconds and it helps you stay current with us in your feed. Send us feedback. We love to hear from you at GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Orlando Montoya, I'll talk to you again tomorrow. 

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