Georgia Commissioner Peter Hubbard on Data Centers, Electricity Costs and The State's Energy Future

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Jeff Postowate (0:21)

Welcome to T&D World Live Podcast. I'm Jeff Poulstewaite, senior editor and lead reporter for T&D World. And if you're a listener, you know that we talk a lot about how the utility industry has to juggle the priorities of sustainability, affordability, and reliability. And today, we have a guest whose career is positioned right where those issues intersect. We have a state regulator with us, Peter Hubbard, commissioner with the Georgia Public Service Commission. Welcome to you, Peter.

Peter Hubbard (0:50)

Thanks very much for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Postowate (0:53)

Yes. And for those of you who don't know, the commissioners of the Georgia PSC are elected offices, and the race, this race has gathered a lot of interest. It was even featured on The Daily Show, I believe.

Part of the reason for that is that the bills in the state have risen nearly $37 since 2021, and utilities are expected to spend about $54 billion in Georgia by 2030 That's according to some data from Powerlines. So Peter, if you could get us started, what can you tell us about the state of electricity and utilities in Georgia as it stands right now?

Peter Hubbard (1:30)

Oh, sure. That's a broad question, but we're in a time of expansion. We are building out new power generation, new transmission, over 1,000 miles of new transmission, and over 1,100 miles of rebuilt transmission in Georgia. And it's largely a function of the data centers that are coming to the state.

So, you know, it's an interesting time because we're having to have a discussion of, you know, who pays for those incremental costs and as well the embedded cost of the infrastructure that we already have. And you also mentioned as well that bills had gone up recently in Georgia. That was another thing that propelled the conversation forward, where the six rate increases over the last few years, two for Plant Vogel, the nuclear power plant we brought online, one for a fuel surcharge, and then three just to maintain the return on equity. And those six rate increases increased the average bill by my calculation more like $52 per month. And so that certainly brought into the public's attention the question of affordability. And so, you know, those are two of the big things that have played out. The data centers that are coming to the state that will put pressure on bills one way or the other going forward, but also those rate increases that we had in the recent past that brought us to where we are today.

Jeff Postowate (3:00)

Yeah, I'm over here in Oregon, and we're seeing a whole lot of campaign ads from the governor's race and others that make electricity an issue, which is not something that we're used to in this industry. Can you tell us what it's like to be a commissioner of a PSC and how you get out there and make the case to voters who may not have thought about electricity in a while?

And can I ask how the picture might be changing for voters and how they view utilities and how they view the people who get them their electricity?

Peter Hubbard (3:33)

Yeah, I think we should give more credit to voters. I mean, maybe they can't articulate why their bills are going up, but they certainly feel them, and it's a monthly reminder when they open their gas and light bills that those costs have gone up. So when I'm out and about, probably the most salient questions are, how are you going to lower those bills? Why are they high in the first place? What can we do about them? And are data centers going to be increasing our bills and have they already? So, you know, just talking about those kinds of issues keeps, it is very salient for voters and it is front of mind. So it's difficult, honestly, to talk about other things than those two things because they're just so important. So we'll see how much it plays out. Election Day from the time of this recording is two weeks away.

But at least the conversations that I'm having are still very much focused on this idea that costs have gone up. It's making it difficult to get by. We're having to make difficult choices. So how can you help?

And there's different ways to answer that, and we'll get into it. But I have different approaches, short, medium, long term, for how we can tackle affordability.