Energy bills are rising nationwide. In Georgia, they’re on the ballot.

The race for two seats on the obscure board that regulates Georgia’s utilities is drawing national attention — and could have major implications both for electricity affordability and one of the biggest planned fossil-fuel buildouts in the nation.

Next Tuesday, Georgia voters will choose whether to keep the state’s five-person Public Service Commission as it is, or elevate two outsiders to shake up the status quo.

Historically, PSC races have drawn a very small number of voters, but turnout in Georgia may be higher than usual this year. For one, legal issues have postponed the state’s PSC elections since 2022. The bigger driver, however, could be an issue that is rising in political salience around the country: Electricity is getting way too expensive. That’s particularly true for the 2.8 million customers of the state’s major utility, Georgia Power, for whom costs have ballooned in recent years.

“Utility bills in Georgia are literally on the ballot,” said Charles Hua, executive director of consumer-education nonprofit PowerLines, during an October webinar.

The race comes as Georgia Power faces fervent criticism over its plan to spend billions of dollars building new natural-gas power plants. Energy experts, consumer advocates, and climate activists have pressed the utility to instead prioritize solar and battery storage, which they argue is not only better for the planet but for consumers’ wallets, too.

It’s a criticism that has been echoed by both of the Democratic challengers up for election next week. Of particular note, however, is the pushback from the candidate Peter Hubbard, a 13-year energy-industry veteran with expertise in complex grid and power-resource modeling. Hubbard has personally run the numbers to back up the claims from himself and others that Georgia Power can meet its growing energy needs with clean energy, rather than gas.

If elected, Hubbard, who runs the one-person policy modeling shop Georgia Center for Energy Solutions, said he’d push Georgia Power to consider these cleaner, cheaper options — and press the commission to be more proactive in shaping the utility’s plans.

“We’re always reacting to what Georgia Power is putting in front of us,” he said. But there’s no reason why commissioners can’t drive the agenda and ​“put something in front of them” instead.

Alicia Johnson, who is running as a Democrat for the other PSC seat, has also called for more clean energy and more active oversight from the PSC to combat rising costs, particularly for disadvantaged households. Johnson is a healthcare-focused consultant and community advocate and is challenging Commissioner Tim Echols, a Republican who was first elected in 2010.

Hubbard is up against Fitz Johnson, a U.S. Army veteran and businessman who was appointed to his seat in 2021 by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Kemp has thrown his financial and political support behind Johnson and Echols.

“My opponent wants to take away your coal. He wants to take away your natural gas,” Fitz Johnson said during an October campaign event covered by the Macon Telegraph newspaper. ​“He wants to bring in this Green New Deal energy policy that they have in California. And I already told them, don’t California my Georgia.”

Fitz Johnson has promoted ​‘round-the-clock power from large-scale plants as the key to Georgia’s economic prosperity; in a recent Facebook post, he framed voters’ choice as one between ​“affordable, reliable energy vs. costly climate mandates and rolling blackouts.” Fitz Johnson did not respond to Canary Media’s requests for comment.

Taking on the utility — and the rest of the PSC

For the average household served by Georgia Power, monthly electricity bills are now a whopping $43 more than they were two years ago, according to data from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

There are several reasons for this rise, but the big two are massive cost overruns for construction of the utility’s nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a spike in the price of gas that Georgia Power passed on to its consumers.

The current PSC signed off on both of those rate hikes. Now, Hubbard and a growing chorus of energy experts, climate activists, and consumer advocates are worried that will happen again with Georgia Power’s push to expand its gas fleet.

In July, the utility presented a new plan to the commission calling for the addition of 10 gigawatts of capacity by 2031 to its current portfolio of 14.7 gigawatts. About 60% of the infrastructure the company hopes to construct would be gas-fired power, while the remainder would be batteries. Georgia Power’s justification for the massive buildout is a projected surge in electricity demand — an expectation based almost entirely on forecast growth in data-center construction.

Rick Anderson, senior vice president and senior production officer for Georgia Power, said in a statement that the plan will ​“help us meet the needs of a growing Georgia with reliable and resilient energy while delivering long-term value for all of our customers.”

But Hubbard and others say the utility might be significantly underestimating the price tag of building and fueling new gas-fired plants.

Though Georgia Power says the buildout would cost $15.7 billion, Hubbard said the true total may reach ​“north of $20 billion,” once taxes and potential cost overruns that could be added in under construction-work-in-progress provisions are bundled in.

Hubbard is also concerned that the data centers underpinning Georgia Power’s expansion plan may fail to materialize. If the AI bubble bursts and those facilities are never built, or if developers simply choose to build in another state, customers would be stuck with even higher utility bills to pay for assets they don’t need.

A Georgia Power spokesperson told Canary Media that the utility has options to contain cost impacts on its customers if its power-demand forecasts turn out to be too high; for example, it could delay or cancel construction or sell capacity on the wholesale market.

“Nothing about the Company’s current request binds the Commission’s hands on taking actions to re-examine a certificate if forecasted needs were to change,” the spokesperson said in a September email.

But Hubbard worries that these kinds of remedial actions won’t be effective. Once the utility starts ordering power turbines, expanding gas-pipeline capacity, and taking on other construction costs, ​“you can’t unring the bell,” he said. ​“The best way to prevent that is to not make the mistake in the first place.”

To be clear, it’s not certain that Hubbard or his fellow Democratic challenger in next week’s election will have the power to make major changes at the commission. If she and Hubbard win seats on the commission, they’d have to convince at least one of the three Republicans to side with them in any decision.

Hubbard conceded that his pro-environmental stances have put him at odds with current commissioners. He’s on the record opposing the commission’s decisions this year on Georgia Power’s integrated resource plan and on a temporary rate freeze that critics say obscures the looming costs that customers may end up paying for the utility’s fossil-fuel-heavy resource mix. Hubbard has also blasted the regulatory group for being too in step with the utility.

“Frankly, the five Republican commissioners on the commission take their cues from Georgia Power,” he said.

He’s not alone in that viewpoint. Robert Baker, a Republican PSC commissioner from 1993 to 2011, told Canary Media in September that he thinks the current commission has failed to sufficiently push back on the utility’s plans.

“You’re dealing with a commission that basically rubber-stamps everything that comes its way from Georgia Power,” he said. ​“That makes it very difficult for people who have a differing opinion about what should happen, or how it should happen, to have serious input into the process.”

Even if it is an uphill battle, Hubbard said that if elected, he’d at least have the ​“bully pulpit” to raise visibility for his concerns — and push for better regulation.

The case for solar and batteries in Georgia

Right now, big solar farms are the cheapest, fastest way to add new electrons to the grid — and Georgia is one of the top states for growth of the renewable energy resource.

Meanwhile, gas turbines are in very short supply, with current estimates of backlogs for new gas-power plants stretching into the early 2030s.

That’s why Georgia Power’s proposal to focus on building out fossil-fueled infrastructure defies logic, Hubbard said.

Georgia Power has put a ​“thumb on the scale” against solar over the past half-decade or so, Hubbard said. The reason, he believes, is that the PSC has mandated that most of the utility’s solar expansion be built by third-party developers rather than Georgia Power itself. But these third-party resources are less lucrative to vertically integrated utilities like Georgia Power, which earn a guaranteed profit on the projects they build and operate.

In recent years, the utility has delayed and rejected solar procurements under competitive structures. Nearly 18 gigawatts of solar and battery projects from outside developers are now seeking to interconnect in Georgia, as Hubbard noted in May testimony to the commission — a pool of resources that could be brought online to meet the load growth the utility is facing.

Georgia Power has pointed to challenges in expanding its power grid to allow these projects to interconnect. Similar grid bottlenecks are holding back new solar, wind, and battery projects across the country.

But Hubbard said the commission could push the utility to find less congested parts of its grid where solar and battery projects could be fast-tracked. In fact, he’s familiar with the Georgia Power maps that can reveal such ​“sweet spots,” due to his work as a grid expert for solar developers in the state.

“This could tell you whether developing a solar and battery plant here could bear far higher costs than developing it at this other location,” he said. ​“What often kills a project are the interconnection costs — and those aren’t known until you go through the whole interconnection study process.”

Georgia Power has insisted that its chosen mix of resources is the best way to reliably provide enough power to meet customer needs. Hubbard conceded that his own modeling lacks the in-depth, confidential data required to say with complete certainty that his preferred solar- and battery-heavy portfolio would be better.

But as a commissioner, he’d be able to access the underlying data to determine the exact mix of clean power versus fossil gas that would be most cost-effective. 

“I’m going to tread carefully on all this,” he said. ​“Once I have access to all that information, I’m not sure what I’ll find. … But I want to do it.” 

Disclosure: Charles Hua is a member of Canary Media’s board of directors. The board has no influence over Canary Media’s reporting.