Wednesday, March 19, 2025–6:30 p.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
As the world becomes more and more digitized, Georgia is seeing a surge in data centers.
Microsoft will invest $1 billion in a data center campus off Huffaker Road. At least two other projects are planned for Rome and Floyd County, plus another in the Kingston area in Bartow County. Data centers use a lot of electricity, and Melissa Free with Georgia Power told the Rome-Floyd County Development Authority on Tuesday that the utility is ready to meet the demand.
“We will ensure that there is power,” she said. “Also, the data centers are putting in a lot of money to ensure that there is no loss of power. We are also protected because in our business we have to have reserves. That is also a regulation that we have to operate with a certain level of reserve all the time.”
In January, the Georgia Public Service Commission passed a new rule that allows Georgia Power to charge new data centers in a manner that aims to protect ratepayers from cost shifting.
“They must pay all upfront infrastructure costs,” Free said. “So, anything required to serve them is paid upfront. Number two is a minimum bill requirement and extending the contract term. Why that is such a big deal is, as I just mentioned, data centers just popped up overnight, so what makes us all believe that they won’t just pop down overnight? How do we know that the technology won’t change so fast that we won’t have stranded assets and stranded infrastructure?”
Over the next six years, the utility projects over 8,000 additional megawatts coming online. A lot of that unprecedented amount of growth is driven by data centers and tech companies.
