Southern Co Reports 55% Increase in Data Center Power Usage Year Over Year

US utility Southern Company’s contracted large-load pipeline has increased by 6GW to 17GW since its previous earnings report. The Birmingham, Alabama-based utility, which supplies electricity and gas across six southern states, reported the increase in its Q2 earnings results.

“The extraordinary economic development momentum and demand for power across our southeast region that we’ve seen for the past several years continues, particularly from data centers and other large load customers,” said Chris Womack, chairman, president, and CEO of Southern Company.

The new contracted load includes Georgia Power’s 3.2GW, 25-year agreement with OpenAI for a data center near Savannah, Georgia. Beyond the 17GW already contracted, Southern has another 8GW of projects in late-stage development, with 3GW expected to be finalized soon. Its broader pipeline of industrial and data center projects now exceeds 75GW. Data center power usage across Southern’s footprint was 55% higher than a year ago, with operational data center load exceeding 1.2GW, up more than 500MW year over year.

“There’s noise all across the country about data centers, I think there’s no moratorium across the state. There may be some moratoriums in various counties, I think you continue to see progress, activities, projects move forward in our territory. Once again, I’ll say we’ve got to do a better job. Hyperscalers need to do a better job of explaining the benefits and value and dispelling some of the misinformation that’s out there on social media,” he said.