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Georgia committee advances bill to bar ratepayer subsidies for data-center buildout
Summary
A Georgia House committee voted to pass House Bill 1063 (LC 560,506), which would require utility contracts with data centers to include protections—minimum bills, credit and termination provisions—and assigns the Public Service Commission authority to enforce compliance; the committee adopted a scrivener fix but rejected lowering the 100‑megawatt threshold.
A Georgia House committee on Friday advanced House Bill 1063 (HB 1063; LC 560,506), a measure its sponsor described as designed to prevent residential and retail electric customers from bearing costs tied to data‑center construction and operation.
The bill requires that contracts between electric utilities and data centers include terms that protect retail customers from costs associated with building and serving those facilities. Provisions discussed at the hearing include minimum billing to recover incremental costs, performance and credit requirements, and termination language intended to shield other ratepayers if a data center defaults or leaves. The measure would apply only to contracts entered into on or after the act's effective date and delegates authority to the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to determine compliance.
Tom Bond, director of utilities at the Georgia Public Service Commission, told the committee the PSC adopted similar rules last year for large customers above a 100‑megawatt threshold, including requirements that those customers pay for needed substation and transmission interconnection costs up front and that utilities file draft contracts and spreadsheets showing incremental cost calculations for PSC review. "The commission adopted essentially the same requirements over a year ago," Bond said, while cautioning that "limiting the ability of the commission in the future to respond quickly to changing circumstances ... can be risky and have unintended consequences."
Aaron Mitchell, senior vice president of strategic growth at Georgia Power, said the company has implemented PSC orders governing large loads and described benefits Georgia Power has been able to deliver to other customers under those orders: frozen base rates through 2028 and PSC‑ordered customer savings the company estimated at about $8.50 across 2029–2031 ("about $102 a year for customers"), which Mitchell said amounts to more than $1.6 billion over three years. Mitchell characterized Georgia Power as neutral on the bill because the PSC rules already provide many of the protections the measure would codify.
Nonprofit and academic witnesses urged additional safeguards. Bob Sherrier of the Southern Environmental Law Center said the contracts being filed and approved to recruit data centers may not, in practice, capture every cost associated with buildouts and that some PSC‑authorized construction has left significant uncontracted capacity. "Georgia Power's own figures ... identified more than 3,000 megawatts that was not backed by any contract at all," Sherrier said, warning that overbuild could represent "billions of dollars over decades on people's power bills." He also said termination provisions in some contracts appear to recover only two years of payments rather than the remainder of a contract term.
Dr. Amy Sharma of Science for Georgia urged the committee to account for demand‑forecast uncertainty, saying independent analyses show lower long‑term demand than company forecasts. "If they overbuild in anticipation of customers that never materialize, we are left holding the bag," she said, while affirming support for the bill as a starting point.
Kara Bender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, said the industry supports the bill's intent and recommended aligning statutory language more closely with PSC rules; she also noted the bill currently applies specifically to data centers rather than to other types of large loads.
At the meeting, committee members adopted a scrivener amendment to Line 18 to correct a drafting error (adding the plural "megawatts" and striking the word "hours"). The committee considered but rejected a proposed amendment to lower the covered threshold from 100 megawatts to 75 megawatts. After debate, the committee voted by voice to report the bill favorably as amended; the chair announced the bill "passes." The record does not show a roll‑call vote tally in the transcript.
The next procedural step is that the bill will be reported from committee and scheduled for further consideration by the full House; PSC staff and witnesses said the commission reviews draft contracts and spreadsheets and may reject contracts that do not demonstrate recovery of incremental costs.
