A top-three North American market that is building fast and cheaper than the coasts. Atlanta has around two gigawatts under construction, Southern Company is adding gas and solar, and access is workable. Strong and on an improving path.
See live grid data →Why: Georgia's PSC now requires any new load of 100 MW or more to sign a customized contract with financial guarantees, terms up to 15 years and minimum payments (in force since 1 February 2025), and in December 2025 approved roughly 10 GW of new generation, about 80 percent to serve data centres, with cost protections for residential customers. Access is managed and selective but genuinely open.
What would change the read: The customized-contract regime and the April 2026 Customer Identified Resource programme delivering firm, predictable connection at scale.
Workable access: faster than PJM, with utility-led connection and active large-load accommodation.
Moderate availability: Southern Company is adding gas and solar to keep pace with the build.
Reasonable cost: mid-range wholesale, cheaper than the coastal hubs.
Very high momentum: ~2 GW under construction, a top-three NA market by inventory growth.
Carbon moderate (~270 g), gas-and-nuclear with rising solar.
Winter Storm Elliott (Dec 2022) forced rolling blackouts at TVA (its first ever) and Duke Energy in the Carolinas when cold knocked out coal and gas generation; imports prevented wider outages.
What this means: A large new load faces occasional exposure here. Monitor conditions and keep a contingency plan.
event-based · FERC Dec 2022 Winter Storm Elliott review
Average customer interruption (SAIDI) of 114.26 minutes per year in 2024, excluding major event days as filed.
The market figure above is an average across these territories. A project sits in one of them, not in the average. Each row is that operator’s own filed record; once a candidate site is matched to a territory, that row is the evidence that applies to it.
| Territory operator | SAIDI min/yr | Customers | Major-event method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Power Co (GA) | 127.94 | 2,717,959 | IEEE 1366 |
| Jackson Electric Member Corp - (GA) (GA) | 73.94 | 268,760 | IEEE 1366 |
| Cobb Electric Membership Corp (GA) | 35.12 | 218,807 | IEEE 1366 |
| Sawnee Electric Membership Corporation (GA) | 45.7 | 200,598 | IEEE 1366 |
| GreyStone Power Corporation (GA) | 94.99 | 149,514 | IEEE 1366 |
| Walton Electric Member Corp (GA) | 168.48 | 140,132 | IEEE 1366 |
Filed to EIA Form 861 for 2024, excluding major event days. Territory-wide averages: see the layer note above for what they do not establish.
Winter generation adequacy under extreme cold is the main forward risk; largely vertically integrated utilities are adding capacity.
What this means: A large new load faces occasional exposure here. Monitor conditions and keep a contingency plan.
modelled
Since 1 February 2025 a new customer whose expected peak demand is 100 MW or more, at one site or contiguous tracts, may no longer take the standard large-power tariffs (PLL-18, or the standard price option of TOU-SC-15) at all. It must negotiate a customised contract under a rule the Georgia commission approved on 23 January 2025. Service is firm: there is no curtailment obligation attached, which distinguishes this from ERCOT or Ireland. The exposure is commercial instead. Contracts now run up to 15 years, against a previous maximum of 5, and carry minimum billing, so the customer pays a set amount each month whatever it actually consumes. Before construction begins the utility may require collateral, a security deposit or a letter of credit, to secure recovery of what it spends preparing to serve. Ending early can require repaying the distribution, transmission and generation investment made to get ready. Every contract at or above the threshold must be filed with the commission at least 30 days before signature, which creates a review window but also means the terms are individually negotiated and not public: there is no template to price against. As of late 2025 the utility had signed 29 large-load commitments, of which 6 are named and 22 remain confidential.
Utility feeds, UPS, storage, on-site generation, islanding, black start and the residual energy you still expect to lose are properties of a specific site design, not of a market. This layer only exists once there is a site, and we never assert it for you.
What this means: The supply crunch looks likely to ease for a new load energizing here in the coming years.
The average customer loses about 114.26 minutes of power per year (2024). This is the standard regulator outage measure (SAIDI); lower means a more reliable grid.
Averaged across 6 territories. No single customer experiences this figure. The per-territory table in the reliability overlay above gives each operator’s own filed record, which is what a site-specific read needs.
153 GW
50 months
The full queue analysis for this market, which covers the share of projects that give up and leave the queue (the withdrawal rate), how much of the queue is data centers, and the sources, is available through /api/v1/queue/us-southeast with a paid key. These are generation and storage queue figures: they show interconnection-system congestion, not a typical large-load connection wait.
Withdrawn (#316). The band was anchored on a regulated bundled industrial tariff that a new 100 MW load cannot take: Georgia closed its standard schedules to new large loads on 1 February 2025 and requires an individually negotiated contract instead. The band's primary source was also EIA industrial monthly pricing, which may serve only as a lagged validation layer and not as the headline large-load price.
No delivered-cost band is published for this market, and no substitute figure has been put in its place. Screening on recurring cost returns insufficient evidence for this market rather than a value we cannot defend.
Restored when: Executed or filed large-load contract terms for a comparable customer, or a published contract-based rate the archetype could actually be offered, with a stated cost boundary, effective date, method and confidence. EIA industrial pricing may corroborate such a band but may not be its primary source. Withdrawn 2026-08-20.
This region requires a jurisdiction. Ask which state the site is in, then read that jurisdiction's record. Do not apply one jurisdiction's conclusion to the region.
PowerGridIQ holds different, and in this case opposite, cost-evidence states for the jurisdictions inside this region. No single regional conclusion is published because any one of them would be false somewhere in the footprint.
structurally_unavailablecontingent_evolvingHigh
2 of 2 data layers measured
Substantial
2 of 3 dimensions: reliability, connection, cost
June 2026
per-layer vintages below
| Layer | Method | Vintage | Freshness | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PGIQ Rating opinion | opinion | June 2026 | Current | PGIQ methodology |
| Reliability | measured | 2024 | Fresh | EIA Form 861, Schedules 3B and 3C (annual electric power industry report) (IEEE 1366 major-event treatment, customer-weighted blend of 6 of 6 territories, 100% of customers, regional context only) |
| Interconnection queue | measured | end-2025 (LBNL 2026) | Fresh | LBNL Queued Up 2026 |
Freshness reflects each layer's refresh cadence: reliability annual to three-yearly, capacity-auction and queue yearly, tariffs every year or two. The full cross-market freshness dashboard is at /data-quality.
Territories in this market, each with its own filed record: Georgia Power Co, Jackson Electric Member Corp - (GA), Cobb Electric Membership Corp, Sawnee Electric Membership Corporation, GreyStone Power Corporation, Walton Electric Member Corp. Which one serves a given site depends on where that site is.
How the connection process is organised: the applicable service and connection entities depend on the candidate location and the power pathway. We have not compiled the structure for this market; that is a gap in our wayfinding, not a fact about the market.
The real-world events that test our Tier 2 call for US Southeast (Atlanta): 1 supports it. Each is dated and cited, so you can check the rating against what is actually happening on the ground.
The US Southeast is now a top-three North American market by build, with Southern Company adding gas and solar.
Source: CBRE ↗How US Southeast (Atlanta)'s reliability-adjusted score and tier have moved, month by month. Part of your Analyst Desk.
Every field above carries its own source and freshness. Price, imports and exports are modelled in every market because no feed supplies them. Carbon intensity is derived from the fuel mix.
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