ATLANTA – Legislation prohibiting Georgia Power from passing on the costs of providing electricity to data centers to residential and small business customers cleared a state Senate committee Tuesday.
An 8-5 vote of the Senate Regulated Industries Committee sent the bill to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
Senate Bill 34 comes in the wake of six Georgia Power rate increases in less than two years that have driven up what homeowners and small businesses pay by 37%. At the same time, the rapid growth of power-hungry data centers in Georgia is behind a demand for 3,300 megawatts of additional electric generating capacity, exponentially more than Georgia Power’s typical growth rate of about 100 megawatts per year.
“The consumers are paying for this additional power that’s being consumed by the data centers,” Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, the bill’s chief sponsor, told committee members Tuesday. “I want something in place that doesn’t let history repeat itself.”
Aaron Mitchell, vice president of pricing and planning for Georgia Power, argued the bill is unnecessary because of rules changes the state Public Service Commission (PSC) adopted last month that prohibit the Atlanta-based utility from passing on the costs of serving new large-load customers including data centers to residential customers.
“We have committed that residential customers will pay nothing to account for those 3,300 megawatts,” he said.
But energy lawyer Bobby Baker, a former member of the PSC, said the new rules the commission approved are full of loopholes that give Georgia Power so much flexibility over compliance that they offer no guaranteed protections for residential ratepayers.
“These rules changes are essentially worthless,” he said. “The cost causers need to pay for the costs they cause.”
Hufstetler’s bill got pushback from committee members who objected to the General Assembly stepping in on issues that are already being handled by the elected members of the PSC.
Others called for broadening the bill to apply to Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) and municipal electric utilities rather than limiting it to Georgia Power. Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, proposed amending Hufstetler’s bill to do just that.
But Kevin Curtin, senior vice president of government relations for Georgia EMC, opposed the amendment as taking away the power of board members of the state’s 41 EMCs, who – unlike Georgia Power’s board – are elected by EMC customers.
“Having a law imposed on us … takes away our boards’ authority to make decisions,” he said.
Summers’ amendment died for lack of a second before the committee approved the underlying bill.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat, an initiative of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
