ATLANTA — A group of state lawmakers introduced new legislation to ensure Georgia Power residential customers aren’t on the hook for the cost of data center operations.
Senate Bill 34 would change Georgia law related to the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, to keep commercial data center costs from being passed on to consumers when it comes to rates, charges or cost recoveries.
The bill was filed by State Sen. Chuck Hufstetler and is sponsored by 18 others in a bipartisan push to protect Georgia consumers from rate hikes related to data centers.
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The bill’s filing also follows a vote in the PSC on Jan. 23 which made it so data center power rates would be required to have different costs than the rates paid by residential and other commercial customers in the state.
The legislative text for the data center bill would update the state’s statutes to say “Notwithstanding the provisions of Code Section 46-3-11, no costs incurred by an electric utility, including, but not limited to, costs associated with increased fuel requirements, generation costs, and transmission costs” related to the electric services to commercial data centers and that would not have been charged if not for those specific customers’ demands.
Additionally, the proposal adds provisions to block power companies from “substantially recovering such costs” by charging other customers.
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Similar to the PSC rule from Jan. 23, the bill sets a “peak demand of 100 megawatts or greater” as the threshold for applicability.
For reference, a megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts. The average Georgia household uses about 956 kilowatt hours per month, based on a yearly average of 11,483 kilowatt hours for residents.
Similarly, a kilowatt hour is equal to 1,000 watts of power, putting data center use of 100 megawatts an order of magnitude above the average residential consumer.
Hufstetler said in a recent statement that he introduced the legislation to make costs go where they’re supposed to.
“I have introduced legislation that would remove the costs of construction, distribution and transmission costs from our consumer bills who are currently bearing these costs and place the costs where it should be. Those that are responsible for these costs should be paying it. We have had six rate increases on consumers in the last two years in part to pay costs brought about by others,” Hufstetler said online. “We now have the fourth highest consumer bills in the country. Our data centers can be good for the state but many of them I talk to agree they should be paying these costs.”
As far as what it looks like for power providers in Georgia, a new release from Georgia Power puts the numbers into perspective.
“Over the next six years, Georgia Power projects approximately 8,200 megawatts (MW) of electrical load growth – an increase of more than 2,200 MW by the end of 2030 when compared to projections in the 2023 IRP Update,” the company said Friday.
Georgia Power said they’d like to increase their renewable resources over the next 10 years.
“The company’s long-term plan highlights the procurement of a total of 4,000 MW of renewable resources by 2035, with at least 1,100 MW of new renewable resources proposed in this IRP,” the company said. “These new resources would expand the company’s renewable resource portfolio to approximately 11,000 MW by 2035.”
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