Georgia Power Rate Freeze Holds as Data Centers Pay

The Georgia Public Service Commission froze Georgia Power base rates through the end of 2028 on July 1, 2025. Base rates are the price of power under each customer’s plan, not including fuel. The vote covers about 2.8 million customers and extends the company’s 2022 alternate rate plan instead of opening a new general rate case.

Storm repair was left off that freeze. That separate case closed in May 2026 with a cut in typical bills, while data-center contracts now carry the promise of a larger credit after 2028.

Base Rates Stay Frozen Through 2028

On July 1, 2025, commissioners approved a deal struck in May 2025 between Georgia Power and the commission’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff. The order does freeze Georgia Power base rates through 2028, and it also freezes the terms and price structures of those plans. Kim Greene, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, called the outcome “a great result for customers, balancing the mutual benefits of extraordinary economic growth among all stakeholders.”

The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) today approved a plan to keep Georgia Power base rates stable and predictable through at least the end of 2028, with storm costs to be addressed in a separate proceeding. Base rates reflect what customers pay for electricity under the…

— Georgia Power (@GeorgiaPower) July 1, 2025

Fuel is not in the freeze. Storm recovery is not in it either. Those two riders were the doors the commission left open when it put off a full rate case. Greene thanked the commission for a “constructive regulatory environment” that, in her telling, lets the company keep building for growth without raising the base tariff.

WHAT THE FREEZE COVERS

• Held flat: Base rates, plan terms, and price structures through the end of 2028 for about 2.8 million customers.
• Still able to move: Pass-through fuel costs and storm recovery charges, which the commission handled in 2026 dockets.
• Next general case: Georgia Power is set to file its next base rate case in 2028, after this freeze runs out.
• What it replaced: A 2025 general rate filing that the May 2025 staff deal took off the calendar.

Commissioner Tim Echols said after the July vote that holding the rates showed the commission was listening to ratepayers while the state kept adding load. The political calendar was not a secret: two seats were heading into 2025 elections with no new base-rate hike on the ballot.

First Came a Three-Year Rise, Then a Freeze

This freeze is an extension, not a reset to some older, cheaper tariff. On December 20, 2022, the commission approved Georgia Power’s amended 2022 rate request, the three-year Alternate Rate Plan that originally ran through December 31, 2025. A typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month saw a bill increase of about $3.60 a month starting January 1, 2023.

That first-year hit was 2.6 percent, with increases of about 4.5 percent in each of the next two years. Staff and intervenors had already cut the company’s three-year ask by nearly 40 percent, down to $1.8 billion, before the commission voted. The 2025 freeze keeps that plan’s structure in place and stops another step-up in the base.

In other words, households are living with the 2022 settlement’s rates, not with a new discount. What changed in 2025 is the calendar. Georgia Power does not get a fresh shot at the base until the 2028 filing, and fuel and storms had to travel in their own cases.

Helene’s Repair Bill Got Its Own Case

Hurricane Helene in 2024 is, in Georgia Power’s own filing, the most destructive storm in company history. On February 17, 2026, the company asked the commission to recover a storm reserve that was under-recovered by $912 million, including nearly $800 million tied to Helene. The filing listed more than 12,200 power poles, more than 1,500 miles of line, and nearly 5,000 transformers damaged or destroyed.

Fuel rode beside that request as Docket 56765. Storm recovery was Docket 44280, the same docket family as the 2022 rate plan, because the freeze had named storms as the leftover item. Tyler Cook, Georgia Power’s CFO and treasurer, said customers depend on the company “to be ready to restore power safely and quickly following devastating storms like Hurricane Helene.”

The February package, taken together, was supposed to lower a typical 1,000 kWh bill by about $1.32 a month, a 1 percent cut, because cheaper fuel would more than cover the new storm charge. Staff then spent the spring taking the storm number apart.

THE HELENE COST PATH

1. July 1, 2025: The commission freezes base rates and sends Helene and other 2025 storm costs to a later case.
2. February 17, 2026: Georgia Power files fuel and storm cases, with $912 million unrecovered and nearly $800 million of that from Helene.
3. May 12, 2026: The company and Public Interest Advocacy Staff sign a new stipulated agreement on both dockets.
4. May 28, 2026: The commission unanimously approves the deal, and the new factors go on bills in June 2026.

Commissioner Tricia Pridemore used the May meeting to thank line crews for the Helene rebuild, calling the storm the greatest hurricane in state history. The money question was narrower: how fast that rebuild would show up as a rider, and how much fuel relief would sit on the other side of the ledger.

Typical Bills Fell $4.03 a Month in June

The May 28, 2026, order did more than split the difference. The commission cut the storm revenue requirement to $109 million from $270 million, stretched storm recovery to 67 months from June 2026 through December 2031, and moved an extra $29 million of capital out of the storm regulatory asset and into plant in service. Fuel recovery came down $13 million from the company’s original ask, after staff had argued at hearing for $19 million in outage disallowances.

For a home using 1,000 kWh a month, the commission put the combined cut at $4.03 a month, more than three times the $1.32 Georgia Power floated in February. Georgia Power separately put the systemwide savings at $285 million a year. Chair Jason Shaw said that after years of higher bills tied to inflation and the war in Ukraine, the commission could “offer some relief to Georgia Power ratepayers.”

FILING VERSUS THE MAY 28 DEAL

Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr. tied the two clocks together, saying that between the freeze through 2028 and the savings passed that day, the commission could offer some relief. The freeze never promised a lower total bill. Fuel and storms were always the moving parts, and in 2026 those parts moved down, not up.

The order also set the next fuel case no later than February 28, 2029, and told staff and the company to study storm accounting and restoration practices and report back. A separate hearing on how Real Time Pricing revenue is credited against fuel costs was put on a clock that runs through December 2026.

Data Centers Underwrite the Freeze Bargain

The household freeze was never a free-standing gift. Georgia Power’s December 10, 2025, stipulation with staff said a growing book of high-demand customers was “a key factor enabling” the three-year freeze, because new load spreads fixed costs. In 2022 the company had told the commission it needed only 400 extra megawatts over seven years. By 2023, with data centers in the forecast, that figure was 6,600 MW.

The January 2025 large-load rule is the legal hinge. New customers above 100 megawatts can be billed on terms that standard customers do not face, including minimum bills and contract lengths of up to 15 years, up from five. They pay transmission and distribution costs as construction proceeds. New contracts in that class must go to the commission at least 30 days before they are signed. Shaw said the energy use of the new plants was “staggering,” and that the rule was meant to spare existing customers the extra cost of plugging them in.

When the company files its next base rate case in 2028, that December 2025 deal says it must do so in a way that puts at least $556 million a year from large loads into downward pressure of at least $8.50 a month, about $102 a year, for a typical 1,000 kWh household. Greene put the politics in one line.

Large energy users are paying more so families and small businesses can pay less, and that’s a great result for Georgians.

Kim Greene, chairman, president and CEO, Georgia Power, December 10, 2025 announcement

By December 10, 2025, the company said it had already filed more than 3 gigawatts of new customer contracts under the new rules. The freeze on the household base is the quiet side of that bargain. The loud side is whether those contracts, and the plants built for them, actually show up as revenue in 2028.

9,985 Megawatts, About 80 Percent for Large Loads

On December 19, 2025, the commission certified 9,985 MW of new generation, about 80 percent of it expected to serve data centers. Georgia Power agreed to backstop the costs through 2031, so if the load does not arrive, the company, not existing customers, carries the bill through those years. The mix staff and the company had tabled nine days earlier was a stack of gas, batteries, and purchased power.

THE DECEMBER 2025 RESOURCE MIX

After the December order, the company, commissioners, and staff said they expected signed contracts for the full 9,985 MW within a year. On August 26, 2026, staff reviewed a 3,200 MW contract with a data-center company. In a letter signed by staff and company lawyers, Georgia Power said that if a data center walks away early, it will not seek from residential and small-business customers any incremental cost for the unused term. The same letter raised the household downward-pressure floor from $8.50 a month to at least $15.00 a month for 2029, 2030, and 2031, and promised a public report twice a year on data-center finances and operations.

With that contract, the commission’s September 2026 fact sheet says Georgia Power has secured customers for all 9,985 megawatts, four months ahead of the one-year mark. The plants are not a forecast anymore. They are a contracted book. What remains is how the 2028 rate case turns those contracts into the $15.00 credit, and whether fuel rules keep large loads from sliding costs onto everyone else.

What Happens to Bills When the Freeze Ends?

The $15.00 monthly figure is a 2029 outcome, not a line on a 2026 bill. It lives in the 2028 base rate case, after the freeze expires at the end of 2028, and it depends on the large-load revenue the company has now contracted actually being booked the way the letters describe. A freeze on the base also leaves fuel and storm riders as the valves that can still move before then.

THE 2029 CREDIT, ON PAPER

• Amount: At least $15.00 a month for a typical 1,000 kWh residential customer in 2029, 2030, and 2031, up from the $8.50 floor set in December 2025.
• Trigger: The 2028 base rate case, filed after the freeze ends, must assign large-load revenue so that credit appears.
• Walk-away clause: Early exit by a data center cannot be billed as extra cost to homes and small businesses for the unused term.
• Fuel clock: The next fuel case is due no later than February 28, 2029, after hedging was capped at 20 percent of burn.

The commission already flagged one path that could still shift dollars. In the May 28 fuel order it set a hearing, to finish by December 2026, on how Real Time Pricing revenue is credited against fuel. If it moves some of that credit from base rates to fuel, Georgia Power could book a base-rate regulatory asset and seek it in the next rate case, and staff and intervenors can argue that only large customers should pay it. Docket 57171, on RTP revenue credit and allocation, is set for October 15, 2026.

Households got a still base tariff through 2028 and a $4.03 cut in June 2026 when Helene’s rider came in below the first ask. The counterparties on the other side of that quiet are the data-center contracts behind 9,985 MW, the $15.00 credit that does not land until 2029, and a fuel docket that can still move money between those customers and everyone else.