Democrats take control of Georgia’s powerful utility regulator

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WABE and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Beginning in January, three of the five officials on the Georgia Public Service Commission will be Democrats. It will be the first time the party has controlled the powerful energy regulation board in 30 years. 

The commission, which regulates utilities including the state’s largest electric provider, Georgia Power, has come under more scrutiny in recent years due to rising power bills and the high energy demands of data centers. 

On Tuesday, Peter Hubbard was re-elected to his seat and Shelia Edwards won her race for an open seat. The third Democrat, Alicia Johnson, was not up for election this year. Georgia PSC commissioners serve six-year terms.  

Now, Democrats say they plan to focus on affordability, clean energy and closer scrutiny of Georgia Power. 

“There’s a long laundry list of things that need to be looked into,” Hubbard said. “We’ll have to triage, in fact, and decide how best to move forward.”

One of his first priorities will be launching an affordability docket, he said — a series of hearings that would delve into the reasons for high power bills and ways to save customers money. Hubbard said he and his fellow Democrats also plan to bring close scrutiny to upcoming Georgia Power requests around making more energy and adjusting customer rates. 

But any changes, especially to power bills, will likely take time. 

“We may not be able to expect immediate effects on our wallets,” said Emory University associate professor Kristin Phillips, who studies energy burden and the PSC. “But I think we can expect immediate change in the types of decisions that are made.”

Affordability and high energy bills were driving issues in the campaigns both this year and last year, the two elections that together resulted in the new Democratic majority on the commission.

“We knew that we had to connect the dots between energy and affordability,” Brionté McCorkle of Georgia Conservation Voters said during a media briefing after the election. Her group campaigned for the Democratic candidates and worked to draw attention to the PSC elections. “It’s not just this obscure regulatory body like it used to be treated. Its decisions directly affect household budgets, communities, health and our energy future.”

Chris Womack, the CEO of Southern Company, Georgia Power’s parent company, also acknowledged the central importance of affordability during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Thursday. But Womack said he’s confident the utility can address those concerns with the new commissioners.

“If you look at what we have been doing with rate freezes, with benefits, with how we are providing benefits from growth to customers — existing customers — as well as to the communities, we think that’s a strong platform to stand on,” he said.

Data centers, power bills and transparency

Since the data center boom in Georgia began, Georgia Power has maintained that the increased revenue from the energy-hungry facilities would more than pay for the new infrastructure needed to serve them. The utility argues that should keep rates lower for residential and small business customers. The utility calls this “downward pressure.” It doesn’t mean, though, that rates will go down for everyone else, but rather that any increases would be offset by the influx of revenue from data centers. 

The utility recently doubled down on that promise as part of its deal to serve a massive new OpenAI data center planned near Savannah. The deal, Georgia Power said, would bring $15 not of savings but of downward pressure per month for what Georgia Power calls the “typical” residential customer. 

Georgia Power also credited the increased revenue from data centers for the temporary rate freeze approved last year. But the rate freeze received criticism from some consumer and environmental groups because when it was announced, the deal essentially preempted previously planned PSC hearings that would have given advocates a chance to verify the utility’s financial claims. Advocates felt the process left them unable to confirm whether the company was delivering on its promises and fully shielding ordinary customers from data center costs. 

It’s part of a broader criticism often leveled at the PSC and Georgia Power: lack of transparency. 

The OpenAI contract was entirely redacted; a summary was provided to the public after the deal was approved. Specific details on other issues – from service contracts, to deals to buy energy, to construction costs – are often redacted from the utility’s public filings under the auspices of trade secrecy. Critics argue that while much of the information is indeed trade-secret, the redactions may go too far, and that PSC proceedings and Georgia Power operations in general should be clearer and more open to the public. Commission chair Jason Shaw acknowledged in an interview with WABE earlier this year that the commission needs to “do a better job of forcing” Georgia Power to make more details of its contracts public.

“I absolutely think transparency is potentially one of the biggest impacts here,” said Phillips of the election results. “It has been often on advocates to push on the way that the PSC communicates about the decisions that it’s making, and I’m hoping that there will be more clarity and transparency.”

The Democrats on the commission have promised to bring increased scrutiny to the next rate-setting process, scheduled for 2028, along with Georgia Power’s long-term plans to make and deliver energy, its forecasts about rising demand and other issues. Hubbard has also proposed conducting a rate case for the state’s natural gas utilities, which he said hasn’t been done in over a decade. And he said they’ll push for other changes going forward.

“We’ll continue with an agenda next year and the year after that to take advantage of this four-year period when we have the majority and can push for long-lasting reforms and shifting the direction of the state in terms of energy,” Hubbard said.