One year after Georgia Power raised residential rates 24% to pay for two new reactors at Plant Vogtle, Georgia Power reported a record $2.5 billion in profits from Georgian’s electricity bills. Meanwhile, Georgia Power’s customer disconnections soared, up 30% from the previous year, as people struggled to pay the high gas and nuclear-driven electricity bills. In addition to choosing the most expensive ways to generate electricity possible, these are additioanl ways Georgia Power keeps your electricity bills high:
- SEEM: create a fake wholesale power market and block a real one. Most states have a wholesale trading market where utilities can buy and sell electricity across state lines. In November 2022 Duke Energy, Southern Company and others created SEEM, the Southeast Energy Exchange Market, but instead of also creating an independent operator with fair trading rules, the utilities run it themselves. That means they can just decide whatever they want - buy less expensive power? Nope, not if it’s not profitable. Dispatch renewables? Nope. Don’t want ‘em. And so on. Instead of saving customers money, SEEM costs us money.
- Overbuild generation. Georgia Power has been overbuilding their grid for decades, resulting in a bloated, expensive grid that is less than half utilized. This is a known problem. There have been numerous articles and reports and news and podcasts written, published and discussed highlighting false load growth forecasts and overbuilding from monopolies in pursuit of profits. It’s even got its own term: the Averch-Johnson Effect. Georgia Power has one of the worst “load factors” of any utility in the country, which the amount of grid capacity that is actually used.
- Blocking solar. While Georgia Public Service Commissioners like to proclaim that Georgia is in 7th place nationally in solar energy procurement, that is because only industrial solar, which profits Georgia Power, is allowed. Growing industrial solar that profits Georgia Power while sidelining commercial warehouse solar, residential rooftop solar, and community solar, all of which benefits customers, is not a win for Georgians. Georgia ranks 43rd place nationally for rooftop solar, and commercial and community solar are too low to even rank.