ATLANTA – Executives representing Georgia Power and the state’s energy regulating agency Thursday defended the utility’s plan to freeze rates against accusations that the temporary pause won’t stop customer bills from increasing.

Georgia Power and the state Public Service Commission’s Public Interest Advocacy (PIA) Staff reached agreement last month to freeze the company’s base rates for the next three years. However, the proposal exempts “reasonable and prudent” costs the utility has incurred from storm damage primarily from Hurricane Helene.

The agreement, which the commission is due to vote on next week, would cancel the rate case Georgia Power had been planning to submit by July 1. Had that case gone forward, the company likely would have sought a significant rate hike, Aaron Abramovitz, the utility’s chief financial officer, testified Thursday during a hearing before the commission.

Temporarily pausing rates would help Georgia Power customers recover from the impact of several rate hikes the PSC has granted the company in the past three years, Steven Ruetger, an analyst with the PIA Staff, testified Thursday during a hearing before the commission.

“Staff believes the (agreement) is a reasonable resolution,” he said. “Stabilizing these rates has tremendous value.”

Abramovitz said Georgia’s Power electrical capacity demand projections have risen substantially in recent years, from an expected increase of just 200 to 300 megawatts forecast in 2022 to about 8,000 megawatts covering the next five to 10 years. Some 80% to 90% of that new demand will come from “large load” customers including data centers, he said.

To meet that demand, Georgia Power is planning major investments in a variety of energy-generating sources, Abramovitz said.

“We’re investing in three new [natural gas] combustion turbines, 1,000 megawatts of battery energy storage units and … more investment to come,” he said.

Environmental advocacy and consumer watchdog groups have argued Georgia Power’s energy demand projections are overblown since not all data center operators that have shown interest in setting up in Georgia will actually come here rather than somewhere else.

On Thursday, critics of the proposed rate freeze also focused on the exemption that would allow the company to recoup its storm recovery costs, estimated at $860 million.

“The rate freeze isn’t a rate freeze,” Patty Durand, founder of the nonprofit Georgians for Affordable Energy, told commissioners. “It freezes rates but does not freeze spending.”

But Ruetger said it’s important that Georgia Power be allowed to recover its storm damage costs sooner rather than later.

“The under-recovery of storm damage costs must be dealt with because Helene was so tremendously damaging,” he said. “Otherwise, the company’s balance sheet is simply going to grow.”

Some of the agreement’s opponents have called upon three members of the PSC – commission Chairman Jason Shaw and commissioners Tim Echols and Lauren “Bubba” McDonald – to recuse themselves from voting on the plan because they had publicly endorsed the proposed freeze prior to Thursday’s hearing. All three declined to do so Thursday after a member of the PSC’s Public Interest Advisory Staff said there were no grounds for such a recusal.