Southern Co., which serves 9 million energy customers across the Southeast, has a pipeline of more than 50 GW of new large load additions within the next decade, officials said Thursday during the company’s third quarter earnings call.
“Over the last two months, we have [signed] four contracts with large load customers in Georgia and Alabama, representing over 2 GW of demand,” said Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO
The utility company is requiring “strong customer protections and credit provisions” to protect against rate increases to serve the new loads, said Chief Financial Officer David Poroch. “Our pipeline of large load data centers and manufacturers continues to be robust across our electric subsidiaries. The total pipeline remains more than 50 GW of potential incremental load by mid 2030s.”
Southern’s subsidiaries include Georgia Power, Alabama Power and Mississippi Power. The utility company on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings of $1.7 billion, or $1.55/share, compared with $1.5 billion, or $1.40/share, in the same period last year.
The company saw sales growth “across all customer classes” in the third quarter, officials said. There were 12,000 new residential customers, “well above historical trends,” and data center usage was up 17% relative to the same period last year, according to an earnings presentation. Higher industrial usage was led by growth in the primary metals and electronics sectors.
“In the third quarter alone, the commercial sector grew 3.5% on a weather-normal basis compared to the third quarter of 2024,” Poroch said. “This growth was driven partially by increased sales to existing and new customer and new data centers.”
Economic development activity across Southern’s footprint “remains robust,” Poroch said, with 22 companies making announcements “to either establish or expand operations in our service territories during the third quarter.”
“Projects within our pipeline are maturing into executed contracts,” Poroch said, which “solidifies a substantial portion of our total forecasted electric sales growth.” Southern sees sales growing 8% annually through 2029, including average annual growth at Georgia Power of 12% through the same period.
“Across Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, we now have contracts in place with large load customers representing 7 GW through 2029,” Poroch said. That ramps to 8 GW in the 2030s “and we are in advanced discussions for several more gigawatts of load,” he said.
The 8 GW of contracts is a 2 GW increase over the prior quarter, officials said. “Contracts cover incremental costs with pricing and terms designed to benefit [and] protect existing customers,” the earnings presentation noted.
To meet the load, Southern utilities are looking to add generation resources. Womack said that within the last month, as a part of Georgia Power's ongoing request for proposals certification proceedings, the utility filed an update to its load forecast projecting capacity needs aligned with the 10 GW of capacity resources being requested, including five gas combined cycle units and 11 battery energy storage facilities.
“These proceedings are scheduled to have a final determination by the commission by the end of this year,” Womack said. Separately, Alabama Power has completed the acquisition of a 900-MW gas generating facility to serve projected long term capacity needs.
“In addition, construction continues on approximately 2.5 GW in both Georgia and Alabama, which includes three natural gas combustion turbines and battery storage facilities, all of which are projected to go online over the next two years,” he said.
