It’s a familiar look for the office of an organization in the Deep South rooted in decades of fighting for civil rights. Displayed on the wall are inspirational quotes from James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Killer Mike. In the conference room, the group has hung maps of the six wards of Albany, Ga.—a useful guide for the on-the-ground organizing work that mobilizes residents to protest and vote.
But the issue at hand on this balmy August afternoon at the headquarters of SOWEGA Rising isn’t the typical topic for civil rights organizers. Around the table, a group of activists from across the region are talking about something wonky, almost quotidian: electricity bills. For years, residents of this part of south Georgia have faced electricity bills that locals say often exceed their rent. Now, organizers around the table say they have an opportunity to do something about it—if they can persuade voters to care about the virtually unknown Public Service Commission (PSC), the state’s key utility regulator. In November, two seats on the powerful panel are up for grabs.
Seated between an environmental activist and the head of SOWEGA Rising, a longtime organizer named Lethia Kittrell, from the nearby town of Fitzgerald, described how the issue of power prices has galvanized her community. People respond viscerally to utility-bill discussions, and her PSC candidate forum drew dozens of voters—including a large contingent of young people. It’s a surprising turnout for a town of 9,000, she says. “The conversation is just beginning down here,” says Kittrell. “But we’re going to do it. We’re fighting.”
This corner of the state, where many residents rely on municipal rather than investor–owned utilities, is far from alone. In Macon, residents turned up in droves for a raffle to win money to be used for their power bill. In Atlanta, a homeowner says she is considering selling her house to escape the electricity costs. And, statewide, the issue has reached a broad base on social media. One TikToker wrote of her monthly power bill doubling in a post that got upwards of 187,000 views: “What the actual hell I canNOT PAY THIS?????” Another TikToker recorded her sparsely appointed home, cutting to a monthly Georgia Power bill totaling nearly $540. The video has more than 275,000 views.
In Georgia, and across the U.S., electricity bills are on the rise. The average Georgia Power monthly bill for a residential customer has increased by more than $40 over the past two years, according to an analysis from the Southern Environmental Law Center. Across the U.S., electricity-price increases have outpaced inflation, increasing 13% since 2022, according to Energy Information Administration data.
There is little to no debate that American consumers will continue to pay more for electricity in the coming years. Demand for power is growing rapidly, in large part because of increased electrification, a growing manufacturing footprint, and new energy-guzzling data centers built to train and run AI models. Meanwhile, the power supply and aging grid struggle to keep up. Inadequate supply and growing demand mean higher costs. The Trump Administration’s approach to energy isn’t helping. President Trump, citing reliability, signed an Executive Order requiring that some old and costly coal-fired power plants stay running, and his budget bill nixes subsidies that helped reduce the cost of some new plants.
While the challenge of rising costs has become an increasingly prominent topic in energy circles, the issue has largely slid under the national radar up to this point, often seen as one component of a much bigger conversation about the cost of living. But the implications of higher electricity prices—political, economic, and otherwise—should not be underestimated. Electricity prices will shape how companies spend their capital—including if, when, and how they build the data centers necessary for AI. Electricity prices will also help determine the U.S. climate trajectory. And for the first time, electricity bills seem destined to have a political valence. American consumers, and voters, hate higher prices. “This is no longer a niche concern among energy experts and advocates,” says Charles Hua, the founder of PowerLines, a nonprofit pushing for wider recognition of utility regulation nationally. “At the end of the day, there are real human beings that set their utility bills, and so people deserve to know that there are people in their own state that have power over [prices].”
Nine states are holding elections for utility commissioners next year. All are home to major data-center projects, ongoing or proposed, and have experienced a rise in rates in recent years. In Georgia, the ripples are already visible. Across the state, residents are angry about their bills. In some counties, locals have become skeptical of new data centers even as they offer a surefire way to generate revenue given the massive real estate and personal property taxes they often pay. And candidates at the PSC and beyond are running for office with the promise they’ll cut electricity bills. In the years to come, the backlash in Georgia may be a warning well heeded—or the first of many battles. A growing group of angry citizens threatens not only elected officials but also the whole national AI push.
If he were to win a seat on the PSC, Peter Hubbard would instantly become one of the most powerful regulators in the state of Georgia. When we meet in Atlanta, he suggests a dive bar on the city’s east side and shows up on a bicycle. On the campaign trail, opponents have suggested that perhaps he doesn’t own a car—an insult in this car–centric city; Hubbard affirms that he does, in fact, have one. At a nearby table, a group of young people are debating the merits of capitalism.
But when he dives into the economics of energy, it’s much easier to imagine him on the PSC dais. Hubbard, the Democratic nominee for the PSC district that includes metro Atlanta, has built a career in energy and currently works as a solar developer. In his telling, his critique of the PSC is built on a foundation of decades in the sector. In contrast, the current commissioners have records as community and business leaders, but most of the body’s five members lack records as power-sector practitioners. (The other Democratic challenger, Alicia Johnson, worked in health care and non-profits.) “There’s a whole host of things that we could do to lower costs,” he says.
At the core of the issue is a simple question of business models. Investor-owned utilities make money by building new infrastructure: power plants, transmission lines, and the other hardware that makes the grid work. In exchange for providing that public service, regulators give utilities a guaranteed return on their investment. That means that utilities really like to build new things, while regulators are supposed to ensure that they don’t build unnecessarily.
That structure creates a challenging dynamic at any time, but it’s especially difficult to navigate in this era of growing electricity demand. Driving across Georgia, I saw data centers at the ends of residential streets, tucked away in industrial areas, and sprouting up on the side of the road.
Last year, Atlanta overtook Northern Virginia as the top location for new data centers in the U.S., according to a report from CBRE, a global commercial real estate firm. New manufacturing facilities, particularly for clean technologies, have taken up new space in industrial parks. And the power infrastructure—substations near the data centers and transmission lines across the countryside—are popping up seemingly everywhere too. Indeed, everyone in the know—from power-sector executives to climate advocates—sees that demand on the horizon and expects that it will continue to grow.
But with so much growth, moving so fast, it’s hard to discern the full scale of the boom. And, even if we did know for certain how much demand would ultimately increase, disagreement remains about the amount of new infrastructure that would be required to meet it. In a filing with the PSC, Georgia Power said it anticipates 8.2 GW of new power demand at peak times by 2031, in large part due to new data centers. That’s a 50% increase from today. To meet that demand, the company says it needs to extend the life of two large coal-fired power plants that it was planning to retire, upgrade its nuclear power fleet, and build new gas and solar capacity. Those big improvements, which the PSC unanimously approved in July, come with a price tag that critics warn could total in the tens of billions of dollars in the coming years. Asking electricity consumers to split the bill won’t necessarily be a burden, if data–center companies end up using all that power and paying their share of the cost. And, in any event, Georgia Power will reap big financial returns.
But forecasting demand isn’t an exact science. And, unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees with the company’s numbers. The hype around AI has led to rampant speculation, with developers launching hundreds of projects across the country knowing full well that not every project will be built. And therein lies the crux of the problem: if Georgia Power makes big investments in the state’s grid and the demand doesn’t materialize, ratepayers—i.e., everyday consumers—will be left paying for it. “They’re not looking out for the interests of the consumer,” says Hubbard.
He is far from the only critical voice. Advocacy groups have poked holes in the plan, calling it a risky bet for cash-strapped Georgians. “All that risk transfers from them to us,” says Patty Durand, who runs Georgians for Affordable Energy. “No matter what assets are stranded, customers have to pay for it.”
It’s not just activists. Companies have been skeptical too. Microsoft, which has announced multiple billion-dollar-plus data-center projects in Georgia in recent years, formally questioned Georgia Power’s projections in a PSC filing last year. The tech giant said that faulty methodology could lead to “over-forecasting near-term load,” thereby leading to higher carbon emissions.
Georgia Power insists that it does its due diligence, carefully engaging with existing customers and tracking progress in new developments. “We’re planning for today, tomorrow, and 20 years into the future in our planning processes based on the data from our customers that we talk to every day,” says Aaron Mitchell, vice president for pricing and planning at Georgia Power.
Voters will soon have a chance to weigh in. Two PSC seats are on the ballot in November, and voters across the state can cast a ballot for both, even though the PSC commissioners technically represent five different districts. If Hubbard and the other insurgent on the ballot were to win, the dynamics of the body would change instantly. The PSC has approved all of Georgia Power’s major requests in recent years—including six rate -increases since 2022—and, critics say, the tone between commissioners and executives in hearings more closely resembles that of a country club than what one might expect at a public hearing. Hubbard acknowledges that two new commissioners wouldn’t be enough to shift the vote on the five-person body, but said that being able to “directly push back” can make a difference. “I very much will use the bully pulpit,” he says.
Every state in the U.S. has a version of Georgia’s PSC. The name and details of how commissioners are selected varies, but they all share the same fundamentals: a small body, accountable to the voting public either directly or through intermediaries like the governor, that approves electric-utility rates—or, in deregulated states, transmission and distribution charges. “Two hundred invisible, yet powerful public-utility commissioners oversee more than $200 billion a year in utility spending,” says PowerLines’ Hua. “These are the U.S. Supreme Court Justices of energy, yet very few people know who they are.”
What would it look like to shift power dynamics on public-utility commissions (PUC)? For one, you might expect more scrutiny of utility growth plans and a push for better consideration of measures to cut consumption. Energy-efficiency tools can help homes and businesses cut usage. Demand-response measures can encourage consumers and companies to shift when they run their most energy-intensive practices to times when excess power is being produced. And improvements like upgrading transmission lines can unlock energy distribution without the cost of new generation.
Those measures just scratch the surface. Many consumer advocates have called for data-center developers to pay up front for costly infrastructure improvements, ensuring that consumers aren’t stuck with the bill if projects aren’t ultimately built. While this is a topic nationwide, Ohio has paved the way, with a key utility in the state working with the PUC to require that data centers pay for most of their planned electricity consumption if they end up using less than anticipated. And developers will pay fees if their projects aren’t ultimately built.
And then there are those calling for a wholesale rethink of the utility model—moving in one direction to a competitive market, as Texas has, or in the other to a form of public or cooperative ownership, which is already common in rural communities. These sorts of changes seem almost impossible to imagine given the sector’s immense political influence and power—not to mention that they come with significant downsides. But big changes often follow big disruptions.
It’s a warm Saturday morning, and the Rosa Jackson Recreation Center in Macon, Ga., is already bumping. Young kids are running around one gym, hopping between an inflatable play structure and the basketball courts. In the other, parents and other adults are walking between tables hosted by local environmental groups as a DJ from a local radio station emcees—live to both the attendees and listeners on the air. The appeal for the attendees was no lofty idea about climate change, or even local clean air. Instead, they were enticed by a raffle: $300 to help with utility bills.
At the Georgia Conservation Voters table, I looked on as a campaigner took attendees on a learning journey. Do you have high power bills? The question was met with subtle nods and sighs of exacerbation. Do you know that you can vote for people who set those bills? Blank stares. After a minute of chatting, most attendees said they were going to think more about it.
Whether they turn up to vote is an open question. Historically, PSC elections haven’t been a huge turnout driver. In Georgia, only 3% of active voters turned out for the June primary—and turnout shrank further in the runoff that made Hubbard the nominee.
But behavior might change with expected price spikes that are unprecedented in recent memory. Since 1985, electricity rates have risen below the pace of inflation and typically attract less attention from consumers than prices at the pump. Now, Americans are worried—even if they haven’t decided whom to blame. Only 30% of Americans feel confident that their energy costs will remain affordable, according to a survey released last year by consulting firm EY. And nearly two-thirds say they couldn’t afford a 10% increase in energy costs.
Georgia Power has sought to calm nerves. In July, the company received the PSC’s approval for a three-year rate freeze. That means that the direct charge for electricity purchased won’t go up, but it doesn’t affect the array of surcharges and fees that make up a substantial part of the bills that consumers pay. “We understand that the cost of everything that all of us buy every day is going up, and so we’re happy to provide that benefit to customers,” says Mitchell.
The issue of electricity prices isn’t likely to remain confined to PUC races. Already, congressional Democrats have framed rising prices as a consequence of the Republican vote for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), which cut subsidies for solar power among other things. While solar has climate benefits, it also happens to be the primary source of new generation deployed today, and the bill is expected to raise the annual cost of electricity for the average household by more than $150 by 2030, according to research from Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan firm. Party leaders like Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer have decried the OBBB on the basis of the power–cost issue, and ads are on the air on this issue in some contested districts across the country. “They promised to bring down prices, but instead our Congressman Derek Van Orden just voted to make our monthly bills go up,” the narrator says in a League of Conservation Voters ad running in Wisconsin. “It removes clean energy from the electric grid, creating a massive rate hike on electricity.”
In Georgia, politicians far removed from the PSC see the opening to talk to voters about rising electricity bills. In a coffee shop on Atlanta’s south side, I met Rohit Malhotra, a candidate running to serve as Atlanta city council president. Malhotra has banked his campaign on affordability issues in the city—and says electricity bills are a central part of that picture. No matter how the PSC race goes, Malhotra says he wants to push the city of Atlanta to take a more active role advocating for lower power bills. That includes not only PSC advocacy but also using the city’s permitting and zoning authority to push Georgia Power to engage. “Land use, zoning, all that is city stuff,” Malhotra says. “There could be pressure points from other places, but I’m just saying: we sometimes have a little bit more negotiating power than we give ourselves credit.”
Sitting in the living room of his quaint two-story suburban home in Atlanta’s Howell Station neighborhood, Chad Murray is doing his best to speak carefully about the new transmission line Georgia Power is building nearby.
Less than six months ago, with limited community consultation, the company began to level foliage steps away from Murray’s front door and started construction on a new transmission line that connects to power infrastructure on site with a data center. All of a sudden, with the trees gone, his front porch offered an imposing view of the Fulton County Jail. Across the neighborhood, “for sale” signs sprinkle front lawns—more and more the closer you get to the site of the construction project. “You can’t go back,” he says. “What they’ve done is irreversible.”
Georgia Power says the project is designed to make the grid more resilient for all customers. Indeed, the company has spent $10 billion over the past decade on a grid-improvement program designed to improve reliability for customers.
For understandable reasons, local residents blame the massive QTS data center across the street that stretches the length of two city blocks. Murray says he “feels bad for the next community” to face the situation. “This conversation is going to repeat over and over in the state,” he says.
Indeed, though electricity bills affect everyone, the number of areas where residents are in direct contact with massive infrastructure build-out is growing. Not coincidentally, data centers, and the on-the-ground changes they bring, exacerbate concerns about higher bills.
All of this means that in Georgia, data centers have become a controversial topic. The Georgia department of economic development recently took down a section of its website promoting the state for data-center development—and declined to comment on the record. Driving across the state, I began to notice a pattern. In places without a data center, local officials expressed enthusiasm about the prospect of expanding the tax base. In places with many data centers, officials didn’t respond to me, flat out declined to comment, or offered an unhelpful emailed statement. Several have enacted moratoriums on new data-center projects. In places that fell in the middle—with one or two data-center projects—officials said they were happy for the partnership, but didn’t want any more.
In Whitfield County, for example, where officials recently approved a massive AI data-center project, county commission chair Jevin Jensen calls the project “a huge win.” But, he adds, he’s “tapping the brakes” on efforts to attract another one. “This is probably going to be it for a while,” he says.
In Washington, D.C., it’s common to hear impassioned pleas about the need to advance AI to win the race against China. That’s important not just for defense but also because as AI scales, its operations may come to reflect the values of whoever developed it. More broadly, supporters say, advancing AI can deliver productivity gains and economic growth—not to mention breakthroughs in medicine and quality of life.
That’s all true. For humanity’s sake I hope those visions are realized. And make no mistake, to get there will require new infrastructure, including new power plants. But try telling the average American that they will need to pay more or watch infrastructure pop up in their backyard to realize that future. The best you’re going to get is a confused look. I know because I’ve asked. Others reject the entire notion.
“I think it’s immoral to put a global technology race on the backs of Georgians,” says Durand. She notes that the state is a top location for new data centers—but also has a high poverty rate. “Our quality of life depends on electricity. It’s an essential service that must be affordable.”
On those last two points, there is widespread agreement among politicians, advocates, and industry. Rising electricity demand is real—in Georgia and around the world. The question is whether the urgency to secure a stable economic future can overcome the division.
This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content.
Photography supported by funding from the Center for Contemporary Documentation.
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