City officials attended the May 22 meeting of the Metropolitan Atlanta Mayors Association (MAMA) to hear from panelists on how to navigate the impact data centers are having on power generation, water supply, and utility bills. Metro Atlanta absorbed 705.8 megawatts of new data-center capacity in 2024, a 76 percent jump from the previous year, according to commercial real estate firm CBRE. Each campus can use 10 to 50 times the electricity of a standard office building.
Though most projects still cluster around metro Atlanta — a proposed 8-million-square-foot technology park near Augusta, along with developers scouting projects from Rome, Maysville, Adairsville, and Bartow County north of Atlanta to Griffin and Butts County to the south — underscores that the data-center boom is becoming a Georgia-wide issue.
Shifting the Cost Burden to Large Load Users
Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols opened with the headline: a three-year Georgia Power rate freeze that includes new rules that shift every dollar of big-load infrastructure onto the companies themselves. Any project topping 100 megawatts, he said, now must post significant letters of credit, sign 15-year power contracts, and pay for needed generation and transmission costs.
“We want to assure there is no incremental cost placed on existing commercial and residential customers,” Echols said. He added that these requirements could even trim monthly bills statewide.
Utilities, Land Use and Indirect Perks
Georgia Power planning chief Stephanie Grossman followed with the scale: an extra 8,200 megawatts of demand by 2030. Currently, the four nuclear units at Plant Vogtle generate 4,800 megawatts. Meeting that demand, Grossman said, will require a diverse mix of solar, gas and nuclear generation.
In addition to new transmission lines to handle the growth, Grossman said Georgia Power is investing “to squeeze as much as we can from a capacity standpoint out of the assets that we have today.” She emphasized that the utility wants to work with communities and stressed that proactive communication on local priorities is essential.
Chris Pumphrey, president of Elevate Douglas Economic Partnership, said the long construction cycle of a server farm draws an ecosystem of suppliers, saying Elevate Douglas courted manufacturers that were building data-center modules, letting them know there’s manufacturing space available. “So, for us it's always been about developing a cluster, how can we build upon that and track the service provider,” he said.
Pumphrey also urged local officials to focus on land use: “What is the growth that you want to have in the community and how does the land use fit within that?”
On the electric cooperative front, GreyStone Power CEO Gary Miller offered a street-level lesson. Three data-center deals will soon account for 60 percent of his co-op’s load. To shield its 133,000 mostly residential members, GreyStone requires each developer to cash-fund any needed substations and transmission lines, maintain deposits worth 3½ months of their highest bill, and limit power-supply contracts to the term of the site lease.
“We’re matching our risk to their term and then holding them accountable,” Miller said.
Water: The Hidden Constraint
Water may become the tighter choke point, Douglas County Water Authority director Gil Shearouse warned. A single thirsty industrial project, he said, can slash a 50-year water-supply plan to a decade or displace enough drinking water for 7,000 homes, which represents approximately 20,000 people.
He went on to say, however, that most modern data centers “don’t require a lot of water,” adding “that the ones that do are getting a lot of the news.” Shearouse also urged local officials to bring the water suppliers early into any data conversation to alleviate any potential issues.
A Local Government Checklist
After the meeting, moderator and Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul distilled the discussion into “a short checklist” for any city weighing a data-center pitch:
- identify appropriate parcels and transmission corridors before developers arrive,
- require long-term contracts that make the companies pay for every pole, pipe and pump, and
- bring water and power utilities into the talks from day one.
“Do the homework up front and you can capture the tax base without saddling your ratepayers,” he said.