Seated at the dais in the Georgia Public Service Commission’s low-slung hearing room, Chairman Jason Shaw seemed perplexed.

It was a Tuesday in January 2024.

Only six months earlier, Georgia Power had completed the first new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle, bringing enough electricity online for hundreds of thousands of homes. A year before that, the utility received approval to add thousands of megawatts of power to its fleet. The company wasn’t expected to ask approval for more until 2025.

But to Shaw’s right, a panel of Georgia Power experts explained that they’d soon need to generate much more electricity .

“I’ll be honest … I’m still kind of scratching my head on how we ended up here,” Shaw said.

Soon, the reason was clear: data centers.

The server-packed warehouses are

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