US utility Georgia Power anticipates that load growth across the state will triple by the mid-2030s owing largely to data centre energy consumption.

“The latest data continues to support Georgia Power’s expectation for continued and robust economic growth in Georgia and the timing of new large loads,” the company’s Nov 18 economic development outlook reads. The utility will outline its strategy to meet the growing demand in its 2025 integrated resource plan, which will be filed in January next year.

Georgia Power’s pipeline of development projects has swelled significantly in 2024, rising from 12 GW to 36.5 GW. Large-scale facilities, including data centres, account for 34.6GW of expected demand. The majority of these projects are due to come into service by the end of 2028, placing a significant strain on the utility to meet the demand.

Georgia Power has received commitments to purchase electricity from 70 data centre facilities. In November, Stream data centres announced plans for a 49 000 sq ft (13 870 sq m) data centre campus in Douglas County, near Atlanta. In the same week, Sailfish Investors revealed plans for a 1.78 m sq ft data centre site in Atlanta.

However, a note of scepticism has been sounded about whether operators will keep to their plan and build data centres in the state. Maggie Shober, the research director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said: “Although these are scary numbers, I think there’s a lot of speculation going on, especially in the data centre industry, where people and companies that are interested in sort of flipping sites for data centres are absolutely scrambling to get into this queue. I think that a lot of these will ultimately never show up. I think it’s going to be a challenge to figure out which ones and how do we determine that?”

Meeting the demand

To meet demand, Georgia Power has obtained approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission to expand its generation capacity by increasing its reliance on fossil fuels and adding more renewable energy by 2025. In November, Georgia Power’s parent, Southern Company, indicated that owing to increasing energy demand from commercial and industrial properties, coal-fired power is considered an option to meet the expected demand.

Its CEO, Chris Womack, said it is considering an “all of the above” generation plan and, as part of its strategy, could extend the life of its four-unit, 3450 MW Plant Bowen coal-fired facility in Georgia.

Currently, renewable energy sources contribute 13 % of the state’s electricity generation, with the majority from hydropower. However, it has significantly scaled up its solar generation capacity over recent years, producing 8103 GWh of solar energy in 2023, more than all solar generation across the state before 2019 combined.

As a result, data centre firms in the state have increasingly sought to sign Power Purchase Agreements to bolster their clean energy supply. Meta, Digital Realty, and QTS have all signed long-term solar PPAs.