Data centers have been a hot topic of conversation, but GreyStone Power Corporation is committed to educating our members about the energy concerns and issues that affect the communities we serve. While there are numerous resources on data centers, below, we explain the impact data centers have on GreyStone’s service area.

Data centers are physical facilities that house critical computing and storage infrastructure, such as servers, storage systems and networking equipment, that power digital services that billions of people rely on every day. Data centers are essential to support modern digital services such as streaming videos, cloud computing, storage, applications and the evolution of data analytics and artificial intelligence. As digital infrastructure accelerates, data centers are becoming the backbone of the digital economy, supporting everything from AI workloads to autonomous vehicles. To meet the growing demand for data centers and the power needed over the next five years, experts find that data center campuses will have to expand from providing tens of megawatts of power to hundreds of megawatts of power. The advancements in high-performance computing (HPC) and the expansion of AI are increasing the demand for computing power and changing the landscape for energy, real estate and construction.

Atlanta is a major hub for data centers due to its strong digital and physical infrastructure, favorable business climate, and low risk of natural disasters. Atlanta is centrally located in the Southeast, making it a convenient metropolitan hub with a wide customer base that helps to create a tech ecosystem, skilled workforce and cost-effective solutions compared to other major markets. Additionally, data centers are drawn to Georgia’s affordable and reliable power. Other local benefits to these business­es include nearby transmission infrastructure (transmission lines and substations), clean energy, fiber optic hubs, low-cost land and accessible water. Moreover, the state of Georgia has a sales tax exemption for data center equipment, in addition to varying types of exemptions and abatements that could be offered on the local level.

The cooperative principal of voluntary and open membership means that cooperatives are open to all individuals or entities who can use their services and are willing to accept the responsibilities of membership. Any individual or entity with the capacity to enter a legally binding contract with GreyStone Power to receive electric service is eligible to become a member of the not-for-profit electric cooperative. Atlanta’s data center market is experiencing significant growth and has become the second-largest data center market after Northern Virginia. The amount of data center construction in the west metro Atlanta area is more than 2,000 MWs. GreyStone is helping to meet a smaller portion of this data center growth, which is helping to keep the residential rates stable while power costs continue to increase.

Data centers can provide several benefits to GreyStone members as well as the local community. The local communities benefit from increased tax revenue, partnerships and investments in local educational programs, and the creation of higher wage jobs resulting from data center growth. GreyStone Power members benefit from increased revenues that will be used to stabilize retail rates by spreading fixed costs over a larger amount of kilowatt-hour sales. As new data centers are connected to the grid, they require new infrastructure to allow for the increase in transmission capacity. The distribution and transmission investment required to provide electric service to these large loads will be fully recovered from the data center and these costs will not be socialized across the GreyStone membership. As a result, these infrastructure improvements will enhance the grid reliability and increase the overall transmission capabilities of the electric grid, thereby promoting future economic growth for all types of businesses and residents within GreyStone’s footprint.

By having data centers pay appropriate amounts up front for transmission and distribution investment, the co-op ensures that directly assigned costs are not socialized across the greater membership, but borne by the data centers. These infra­ structure improvements, which include new substations, help to improve the financial health of the co-op, thereby protecting the membership from stranded investment risk. GreyStone also ensures that the data centers provide an appropriate amount of performance assurance and upfront deposits required to cover any unforeseen stranded investment directly tied to power supply that is contracted to serve the data center facility.

GreyStone maintains a 10-year power supply planning forecast based on its expected customer load growth. Absent the influx of data centers, the 10-year planning horizon showed a conservative year-over-year growth rate, for which a large majority of the power supply was sourced from their generating partners, Oglethorpe Power Corporation (OPC) and Green Power EMC (GPEMC). As a member of both OPC and GPEMC, GreyStone and many other Georgia EMCs may subscribe to a robust portfolio of power supply resources, thereby creating a diverse and reliable generation portfolio. In addition to these power supply opportunities, GreyStone has various power purchase agreements with other market suppliers that help to support the data center retail service agreements by aligning the power supply requirements and contract term lengths.

Proximity to a data center minimizes the physical distance that data must travel. This leads to low latency and better performance for all broadband users, including businesses. Streaming, gaming and cloud services perform better and more reliably in this environment. This improved uptime is beneficial in a disaster recovery situation as well. Having a data center nearby also reinforces local control of digital infrastructure, keeping capital dollars in our local community. A local data center can help support local schools, hospitals and government offices with higher reliability and speed.