Most Georgians couldn’t name a single member of the Public Service Commission. But on Nov. 3, those five little-known seats may shape your family’s budget more than anything else on the ballot.
The PSC sets what you pay Georgia Power to keep the lights on, the air conditioning running and the refrigerator cold. Right now, Republicans hold a 3–2 majority. Two seats are on the ballot this fall. If Democrats win them, they will control how Georgia prices electricity at the moment it matters most.
Before Georgians make that trade, they should look at how it has gone in the states where Democrats already run energy policy.
As of September, the average Georgia home pays about 16.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. That is below the national average of 18.3 cents.
Now compare the states that many progressives hold up as models:
- California: 34.7 cents, more than double Georgia’s rate
- Massachusetts: 29.6 cents, about 80% higher
- New York: 29.5 cents, about 80% higher
- Rhode Island: 29.2 cents, about 80% higher
- New Jersey: 25.0 cents
- Connecticut: 24.3 cents
- Illinois: 19.9 cents
In dollars, a household using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month pays about $164 in Georgia. The same power costs about $295 in New York or Massachusetts and nearly $350 in California. That’s an extra $1,500 to $2,200 a year, taken from families before they buy groceries, gas or school clothes.
This didn’t happen by accident. Those states chose mandates over reliability. They shut down working power plants before replacements were ready. They piled green-energy surcharges onto every bill and let regulators act as activists. Working families have paid for it.
Georgia’s Republican-led commission has taken a different approach, and it’s working. In July 2025, the PSC froze Georgia Power’s base rates through at least the end of 2028. That gives families and employers something rare in today’s economy: predictability.
In May of this year, the commission approved a rate reduction that cuts the typical residential bill by about $4 a month, or roughly $285 million a year in savings statewide.
The commission has also dealt with the biggest issue facing our grid, the rise of massive data centers. Georgia Power expects electricity demand to grow dramatically in the coming decade, and data centers account for almost all of it. In January 2025, the PSC unanimously adopted rules that require new customers using more than 100 megawatts to pay the transmission and distribution costs of connecting to the grid. Their contracts also now need commission approval.
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The principle is simple: Big Tech pays its own way so that Georgia consumers don’t subsidize Silicon Valley’s server farms. The approach also makes economic sense. The same data centers that critics attack bring billions in investment, construction jobs and new tax base to Georgia counties. We can welcome them without passing the bill to households, and that’s what the current commission is doing.
Last November, Democrats won two PSC seats for the first time since 2000. They ran on frustration over power bills, and that frustration was real. But frustration is not a plan, nor is it a peek into the future. So far, the new commissioners’ main contribution has been offering failed amendments to a rate cut they ended up voting for anyway.
Hand Democrats the majority, and Georgia will face the same pressures that drove up bills in California, New York and Massachusetts. Expect early retirement of reliable generation, costly mandates and “climate” riders on your bill. Those states didn’t set out to have the most expensive power in America. They got there one well-meaning regulation at a time.
Georgia has a real advantage. We have an all-of-the-above energy mix that includes nuclear, natural gas and solar. We have a grid that keeps up with growth, and we charge rates below the national average. We should protect that advantage, not throw it away. If you want to see where the other path leads, pull up a power bill from California. Then look at yours.
Chip Lake is a veteran Georgia-based Republican political strategist and consultant.
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