OPINION:
As electricity demand surges, driven by data centers, advanced manufacturing and a rapidly evolving economy, communities are right to ask a simple question about new energy infrastructure: who pays, and who benefits?
Here’s the bottom line in the regions we serve: Southern Company is building new energy infrastructure designed to benefit everyone without shifting costs onto existing customers. We do this through smart, customer-first planning and by making sure new large load customers like data centers pay the full share of their costs. This practice helps ensure that new growth doesn’t have to mean higher rates for families and small businesses, and that, done right, it can deliver value for everyone.
Right now, the base rates our retail customers pay for electricity are frozen across much of our service area as we execute an unprecedented level of infrastructure buildout to meet projected demand. This outcome isn’t accidental. It’s the product of how our system is designed and regulated and our commitment to always putting customers at the center of everything we do.
Meeting new electricity demand is vital to the American economy and our global competitiveness. However, we believe it is just as important to meet demand in a way that delivers real value for existing customers. For our country to get this right, it will take more than capital and putting steel in the ground. It will require the right experience and the right market framework.
That’s why policymakers should take a closer look at what’s happening in the Southeast. Southern Company’s subsidiaries operate under a vertically integrated, stateregulated model across the regions where we serve retail electric customers, meaning we are responsible for generating, transmitting and delivering power to the communities we serve. In other words, we don’t just build part of a system and move on to the next thing. This end-to-end responsibility allows us to plan comprehensively, from the power plants to the wires that reach homes and businesses.
This holistic view matters a lot in an era of expansion driven by data centers and hyperscalers. It allows us to understand precisely what it costs to bring a major new customer onto the grid and to price that connection accordingly to help ensure existing customers are protected. There’s no guesswork and no passing the bill down the line. Growth is planned, measured and accounted for by design.
This same structure also benefits large customers that come with complex energy needs. Data centers and other hyperscale users require reliable, dispatchable power at scale and confidence that infrastructure will be delivered on time. Our model enables faster decisionmaking and streamlined execution, which is critical as the United States competes in a global technology race.
The Southern Company system is scaling up responsibly to meet projected new demand. Over the next five years, we expect to roughly double our current pace of investment, supported by an approximately $80 billion capital plan that includes approximately 10 gigawatts of approved new generation and nearly 1,000 miles of new transmission. In the regions we serve, we can confidently say there will be power.
But this investment alone isn’t customer protection. That protection comes from how growth is structured. In Georgia, for example, our large new customers are served under longterm contracts that are often 15 years or more and include minimum bills, cost-of-service recovery and strong financial safeguards. We make sure growth is paying for itself, or it doesn’t move forward.
Our customers are already feeling the results of this approach with multi-year rate freezes in place in Georgia and Alabama. In Georgia, for example, Georgia Power is working with the Georgia Public Service Commission to ensure that growth from data centers will not only keep base rates frozen through at least 2028, but to also deliver additional savings for customers after that.
Southern Company is also using public-private partnerships to amplify customer benefits. Earlier this year, Georgia Power and Alabama Power secured up to $26.5 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy, which is the largest energy infrastructure commitment in the Department’s history. That financing is expected to reduce interest expenses by more than $300 million annually, which translates to over $7 billion in estimated customer savings over the life of the loans. When we can reduce the cost of building new infrastructure, our market structure allows us to pass those savings directly onto our system’s customers.
The essential energy infrastructure investments in the loan package include power from natural gas, nuclear uprates and license extensions, hydropower and battery energy storage, as well as transmission system improvements and grid enhancements to help provide safe, reliable and affordable energy to Alabama Power and Georgia Power’s combined 4.3 million customers.
There is no onesizefitsall solution to America’s energy future. But Southern Company is proving that growth can take place in a way that strengthens the grid and protects customers at the same time.
We are different by design. And it’s working.
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