Legislation aimed at rising power bills, data center costs fizzles at Georgia’s Gold Dome

Crossover Day was the deadline for bills to pass at least one legislative chamber to have a chance of becoming law this year. There are ways for legislation to be revived, but bills that didn’t get a vote Thursday are likely dead for the year.

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Hufstetler’s bill, which is similar to one passed by the Senate last year, would have allowed the governor to appoint a Consumers’ Utility Counsel director and for the department to be housed under the Georgia Attorney General’s office. The counsel would represent customer interests at the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electric, gas and telecommunications utilities in the state, plus it would have the right to argue for customers in judicial cases affecting utility rates.

During a February Senate committee hearing on the bill, Hufstetler said Georgia is one of only four states without an office like this. Georgia had a Consumers’ Utility Counsel for years, but the office was eliminated in 2008, a casualty of Great Recession-era budget cuts.

In the years since, Georgia Power customers have faced a slew of Public Service Commission-approved rate increases. Since late 2022, a series of six rate hikes have pushed the average Georgia Power residential customer’s monthly bill up by about $43, according to data from the company.

Tom Bond, the commission’s director of utilities, told the Senate committee that he wasn’t sure a Consumers' Utility Counsel was necessary. He said the Public Service Commission already has staff that is supposed to advocate in the public interest.

Hufstetler told the committee he couldn’t say for sure whether a Consumers' Utility Counsel would have kept rates from climbing in the years since the office was shuttered. But, he said, “Rates in Georgia relative to other states have changed since 2008,” pointing to a need for another party to argue on their behalf.

Inaction on data center costs

Another bill sponsored by Hufstetler dealing with the cost of new infrastructure being built to serve data centers did not advance on Crossover Day.

The measure, Senate Bill 34, cleared the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee last month but was left sitting in the chamber’s Rules Committee by its chairman, Matt Brass, R-Newnan.

New figures show metro Atlanta was the top market in the country for leased data center space last year. The warehouses, which are packed with the computer servers that power streaming services, online banking, artificial intelligence and more, use enormous amounts of energy. Some demand as much as a small city.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

Georgia Power is already laying the groundwork to serve the data center influx, building new power plants, costly transmission lines and more.

The bill would have required Georgia Power to charge data centers for any costs “substantially related to” serving the facilities, or that “would not have been incurred” otherwise.

Georgia Power argued against the bill. In committee hearings, the utility’s executives said new rule changes approved by the Public Service Commissiondo enough to allow it to charge data centers for costs associated with providing them electricity.

Proponents of the bill said the commission’s rules were weak and gave Georgia Power too much wiggle room on cost allocation.