The goal: To fund upgrades that will raise the max power output of plants Vogtle and Hatch, adding 96 MW to Georgia's grid. The enhancements will also extend the life of the units and “help Georgia Power customers receive even more value from the existing nuclear fleet,” Joshua Peacock, communications lead at Georgia Power, told us. 

A new structure: Google would make monthly payments under a proposed Georgia Power tariff and receive zero-emission credits in return. The value of those credits would be defined in a contract between the utility and data center customers. 

The impact on bills: Georgia Power froze its base rates through 2028, and intends to ask the PSC to lower the base rates again in the future, according to Peacock. The utility has been able to keep its rates steady “because of all of the growth and revenue coming in from large energy users like Google,” he said. 

In Texas: Gov. Greg Abbot is adding a layer to his pause on data center approvals. The state must now halt environmental permitting until ERCOT finishes its audit of data center project applications. And that’s not all—Abbott said he will work with the legislature next session to “eliminate any financial incentives for data centers." 

In California: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that will require data centers to: 1) bring new clean energy onto the grid, 2) cover the cost of upgrades, and 3) demonstrate that projects “meet state standards on energy, water, and fuel consumption.” He also vetoed a bill that would have created more oversight for the PUC, saying it would cost too much and would undermine the work of the Public Advocate's Office. 

Why now? Ahead of the midterm elections, public opposition to data centers is growing. Now, 75% of Americans oppose local data center development, according to recent polling from Heatmap. And to power all of those data centers in the next few years? We’re short “six New York Cities” worth of electricity, Morgan Stanley estimates.

Too uncertain: Duke is trying to build a 255-MW gas plant, which the utility says it needs in order to meet growing data center demand. But that growth “appears to be based upon anticipated data center customer additions,” the North Carolina PUC wrote, which is "insufficiently reliable to the Commission to act at this point.” 

Too costly: One Commissioner noted that he supports gas as a fuel source, but that the $584 million price tag for the plant did not “provide reliability value.”

The Department of Energy has selected 21 projects to receive a collective $99M, covering both field-scale tests of next-generation geothermal technologies and drilling to scope out potential geothermal sites. 

Called his shot: DOE Under Secretary of Energy Kyle Haustveit previewed this exact move when he joined Energy Central for a conversation in April.“There’s been niche laboratory work that’s been critical for years,” he said. “Now it’s time to go put those technologies to work” to understand “what it looks like in the field,” he said. 

The stakes: The DOE’s own estimates suggest that, fully tapped, geothermal could produce up to 8.5% of U.S. power (up from less than half a percent today). But getting there requires much more data, Haustveit noted, along with major scaling. According to the DOE, success in these 21 projects will be readily shared with the wider industry: So let’s all watch for the DOE to dig deep on this power source…literally and figuratively.