A slew of recent rate hikes that have driven monthly electricity bills up for millions of Georgia Power ratepayers have pushed Georgia legislators to consider reviving a long-shuttered office to advocate on consumers’ behalf.
SB 457, sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hufstetler (R-Rome), would reconstitute the office of the Consumers’ Utility Counsel (CUC) to advocate for Georgians in cases affecting the rates charged by utilities, including Georgia Power. The director of the CUC would be appointed by the governor, and would have the power to represent customer interests in cases at the Georgia Public Service Commission, the five-member elected body that regulates electric, gas and telecommunications utilities in the state.
The bill passed the Georgia Senate on Crossover Day and has been assigned to the House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee helmed by Chairman Robert Dickey (R-Musella).
In a Senate committee hearing on the bill last month, Hufstetler signaled that the series of PSC-approved increases to Georgia Power’s rates in recent years had inspired the legislation.
“I think there’s a lot of wisdom in having someone who looks out for the consumer in many of these complicated issues,” Hufstetler said during the Feb. 14 hearing.
Since late 2022, the PSC has approved customer bill increases to pay for the cost of Plant Vogtle’s expansion, fuel burned at Georgia Power’s power plants, transmission upgrades and more. After Vogtle’s second new nuclear reactor enters service — likely between April and June — the average Georgia Power customer will have seen their monthly bill climb by roughly $38 in roughly a year and a half. Another rate hike is set to kick in at the beginning of 2025.
Even before those rate increases took effect, 2022 data from the federal Energy Information Administration shows residential customers in Georgia had the seventh-highest average monthly electricity bills in the country. The data includes all electricity providers in Georgia, not just Georgia Power.
Georgia had a Consumers’ Utility Counsel for years, but the office was shuttered in 2008, a casualty of Great Recession-era budget cuts. According to Hufstetler, Georgia would rejoin 46 other states that still have similar offices.
In the years since the Consumers’ Utility Counsel was defunded, the PSC has made several critical decisions involving Georgia Power. Arguably the most significant concerned the fate of the Plant Vogtle expansion, which is more than seven years behind schedule and roughly $20 billion over budget.
After regulators in South Carolina pulled the plug on two nearly identical nuclear reactors amid skyrocketing costs, the Georgia PSC voted in 2017 to continue the Vogtle project, which Georgia Power had already spent $5 billion on. Commission staff and others had argued that cancelling it was in the best economic interest of ratepayers.
The PSC already employs a public interest advocacy staff, which intervenes in cases and can conduct discovery and cross-examine witnesses. Reece McAlister, the PSC’s executive director, told the Senate committee last month he would defer to the General Assembly, but said he felt the commission’s public interest advocacy staff already served a similar purpose.
Asked whether Georgia Power supports SB 457, Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft said the company recognizes and respects “the important role of the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff and consumer affairs organization in our state’s regulatory processes ... .”
Georgia Power is currently asking the PSC to approve a vast expansion of its electricity generation fleet to serve an influx of “large load customers, like data centers that are flocking to Georgia.
The company’s executives have testified that adding those new power assets will put “downward pressure” on rates. But last week, PSC staff witnesses disputed the claim, saying that may not be true for all customer classes.
The commission is set to decide the case in mid-April.
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