Data Centers Not Hitting My Power Bill, At Least Not Yet
After a long stretch of ninety-degree days here in Atlanta, I opened our power bill last week and winced. My first assumption, having read too many headlines lately, was that the data centers going up around the state had finally found their way onto my statement. That turned out to be wrong, though not comfortingly so.
Georgia Power customers have absorbed six rate increases since 2023. As of last summer, a household using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month was paying $43 more than in 2022, according to the company’s own data. None of it was artificial intelligence. It was a rate increase approved in 2022, a spike in fuel costs, and above all, Plant Vogtle, the two new nuclear reactors regulators approved back in 2009. Customers were ultimately charged $7.56 billion of the Vogtle construction cost under a 2023 settlement. Adjusted for inflation, the run-up is smaller than it feels, and Georgia’s rates still sit roughly 20% below the national average.
Georgia has also written rules meant to keep data centers from changing that. Since February 2025, any customer drawing more than 100 megawatts must sign a custom contract, and Southern Company says those carry fifteen-year minimum terms, minimum bills covering the added cost of service, and collateral posted by customers, roughly $21 billion in aggregate across the portfolio so far. Base rates are frozen through 2028, but fuel costs are not, and despite efforts to curb price increases for households, large customers could start pushing everyone else’s fuel costs up 5-11% a month, by some estimates.
Nationally, prices have climbed fastest where data centers cluster, though the cause is contested. The Energy Information Administration reported average electricity revenue per kilowatt-hour up 9% nationally this February, but 26% in Virginia, 22% in Ohio, and 20% in Pennsylvania. All three sit in the same region, where some argue that plant retirements seem to have contributed to price increases before anyone built a server farm.
A May study from NC State, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, and Toronto modeled scenarios with power costs rising 6% to 29% nationally by 2030, and up to 57% in the worst-hit areas, primarily due to demand from data centers. What is worth watching here is not last week’s power bill but the one that arrives in 2029. Georgia Power’s demand forecast went from 400 megawatts of expected growth in 2022 to 8,500 by 2025, and in December, regulators approved nearly 9,900 megawatts of new plants. Commission staff had initially recommended approving a portion conditionally, warning customers could end up paying for capacity nobody ever uses, but they ultimately approved the full request for new plant approvals.
So, the data centers are not on my bill yet. For now, the summer heat can still be blamed for most of the monthly spike. Whether that lasts depends on something no monthly statement can answer, which is whether the demand all of the power plants are being built for actually shows up.
Corey Erdoes