Grid Resilience

Georgia: a closer look

Georgia is where I live, so I wanted to look at it more closely than a fifty-state ranking allows. This sets the project's score for Georgia against the state's figures from the EIA and a couple of other open sources.

Where Georgia sits in the index

On the real data Georgia sits in the middle of the table, and no single part of the score stands out as its problem. An earlier draft, on the sample, had it near the top.

19thof 50 states and DC
41.1exposure score (0 to 100)
343 minoff supply per customer, 2023
Spare capacitywhat mostly drives it

An earlier version of this page had Georgia second. That was the sample. With the real EIA-861 outage figures and real plant capacity from eGRID it comes out nineteenth, and 343 minutes off supply is close to the national middle.

Nothing about Georgia is extreme on this measure. Its 343 outage minutes are middling, and gas, nuclear, coal, solar, biomass and hydro all contribute, so it is nowhere near the concentrated supplies that put Mississippi and West Virginia at the top. What edges it up is the spare-capacity part, which still runs on sample peak demand.

The real numbers

These come from the EIA's Georgia electricity profile for 2024, so they are real figures rather than the sample.

140 TWhnet generation a year
8th in the US
39,746 MWsummer capacity
7th in the US
Natural gaslargest single source
EIA 2024
11.4¢/kWhaverage retail price
26th in the US
150 TWhretail sales a year
5th in the US
28 GWof that is regulated utilities
the rest is IPPs and CHP

Georgia both makes and uses a great deal of power. It sells more electricity than all but four states, while the price people actually pay stays fairly ordinary.

Where the power comes from

Share of generation by fuel, from EPA's eGRID for 2023. That is a different source from the EIA totals above. Gas does most of the work and nuclear is a clear second, while coal keeps slipping as solar climbs.

Natural gas
46%
Nuclear
29%
Coal
13%
Solar
6%
Biomass
4%
Hydro
2%

Source: EPA eGRID2023, Georgia plant records.

The big plants

A lot of Georgia's power comes from a handful of very big stations, which is the sort of thing the concentration part of the score is meant to catch. Two of them matter nationally: Bowen is the second largest coal plant in the United States, and Vogtle is among the largest nuclear stations. The five largest in the state, from eGRID:

PlantFuelCapacityGenerationCO2
Vogtlenuclear3,544 MW23.0 TWhnone
Bowencoal3,499 MW10.2 TWh11.2M t
McDonoughgas2,848 MW17.8 TWh7.1M t
Scherercoal2,673 MW6.5 TWh8.3M t
Hatchnuclear1,848 MW14.3 TWhnone

Source: EPA eGRID2023. Generation in terawatt-hours; CO2 in millions of tons a year.

Plant Vogtle (nuclear)

Vogtle's two new reactors, Units 3 and 4, started up in 2023 and 2024, the first newly built US reactors in a generation. The number above is for 2023, before Unit 4 was running, and with Unit 4 Vogtle is past Palo Verde in Arizona, which the 2023 data still has as the largest in the country at 4,210 MW. All that steady, low-carbon output helps on the spare-capacity side of the score, but it also means a lot now rides on one site.

Plant Scherer (coal)

Scherer, near Juliette, is the seventh largest coal plant in the country out of 222. At 8.3 million tons of CO2 in 2023 it was the twenty-second biggest single emitter of any US power plant. Coal is a shrinking part of Georgia's power now, but a plant this size still counts, both for emissions and for how much sits on one asset.

Most of the state buys from Georgia Power, part of Southern Company, with the rest covered by a big set of electric membership co-ops and city-owned systems.

Where the plants are

Every Georgia plant of 50 MW or more from eGRID, placed roughly where it sits. Size is capacity, colour is the fuel, and you can hover a dot for its name and size. The handful of big dots are where most of the power actually comes from.

Live Oak Solar, LLC, solar, 51 MW Hazlehurst II, solar, 52 MW Albany Green Energy LLC, biomass, 54 MW OE_GA3, solar, 58 MW GRP Franklin Renewable Energy Facility, biomass, 58 MW GRP Madison Renewable Energy Facility, biomass, 58 MW Piedmont Green Power, biomass, 60 MW Oliver Dam, hydro, 60 MW SR DeSoto III, solar, 60 MW SR DeSoto II, solar, 65 MW SR Perry, solar, 68 MW Jesup Plant, biomass, 70 MW PCA-Valdosta Mill, biomass, 70 MW Hobnail Solar, solar, 70 MW SR Cedar Springs, LLC, solar, 70 MW Inland Paperboard Packaging Rome, oil, 70 MW Tallulah Falls, hydro, 72 MW Brunswick Cellulose, biomass, 72 MW Port Wentworth Mill, biomass, 72 MW West Point (GA), hydro, 73 MW Riverwood International Macon Mill, biomass, 73 MW SR Terrell, solar, 74 MW White Oak Solar, LLC, solar, 76 MW Flint River Operations, biomass, 77 MW Decatur Parkway Solar Project, LLC, solar, 80 MW Bulldog Solar LLC, solar, 80 MW Lancaster Solar GA, solar, 80 MW Walton Bainbridge Power Facility, oil, 80 MW WestRock Southeast, LLC., biomass, 82 MW Graphic Packaging International Augusta Mill, biomass, 85 MW Snipesville, solar, 86 MW Allatoona, hydro, 87 MW Sowega Power Project, gas, 100 MW SR Lumpkin, solar, 100 MW Georgia-Pacific Cedar Springs, biomass, 101 MW White Pine Solar, LLC, solar, 101 MW SR Arlington II, solar, 102 MW Butler Solar Project 103, solar, 104 MW SR Clay, LLC, solar, 106 MW SR Snipesville III, solar, 107 MW SR Snipesville II, solar, 107 MW Dougherty County Solar, LLC, solar, 120 MW Robins Air Force Base Solar, solar, 128 MW Buford, hydro, 131 MW Savannah River Mill, oil, 140 MW Taylor County Solar, solar, 148 MW Quitman Solar, solar, 150 MW Quitman II Solar, solar, 150 MW International Paper Savanna Mill, biomass, 154 MW SR DeSoto I, LLC, solar, 165 MW Walter F George, hydro, 168 MW Camilla Solar Energy Project, solar, 171 MW Robins, gas, 184 MW Twiggs Solar, solar, 204 MW Hickory Park Solar Hybrid, solar, 236 MW Smarr Energy Facility, gas, 242 MW Baconton Power, gas, 242 MW Cool Springs Solar (Hybrid), solar, 253 MW Allen B Wilson Combustion Turbine Plant, oil, 318 MW Wallace Dam, hydro, 321 MW Mid-Georgia Cogeneration, gas, 323 MW Hartwell Energy Facility, gas, 360 MW MPC Generating, gas, 386 MW Doyle Energy Facility, gas, 409 MW Hartwell Lake, hydro, 420 MW Walton County Power, gas, 494 MW Hawk Road Energy Facility, gas, 495 MW Carters, hydro, 500 MW Chattahoochee Energy Facility, gas, 540 MW McManus, oil, 560 MW Sewell Creek Energy, gas, 570 MW Wansley (7946), gas, 594 MW Bobby C. Smith Jr. Energy Facility, gas, 597 MW Richard B Russell, hydro, 628 MW AL Sandersville Energy Facility, gas, 692 MW Edward L Addison Generating Plant, gas, 701 MW Talbot Energy Facility, gas, 726 MW Washington County Power, gas, 796 MW Yates, gas, 807 MW McIntosh (6124), gas, 810 MW Rocky Mountain Hydroelectric Plant, hydro, 848 MW Dahlberg (Jackson County), gas, 919 MW Tenaska Georgia Generating Station, gas, 1,099 MW Thomas A. Smith Energy Facility, gas, 1,192 MW Wansley CC (55965), gas, 1,239 MW McIntosh Combined Cycle Facility, gas, 1,377 MW Edwin I Hatch, nuclear, 1,848 MW Scherer, coal, 2,673 MW Jack McDonough, gas, 2,848 MW Bowen, coal, 3,499 MW Vogtle, nuclear, 3,544 MW

Hover or tap a plant to see what it is.

Source: EPA eGRID2023, plants of 50 MW and up. Click a fuel to show or hide it, and hover a dot for details.

The storms behind the outages

Outages are not what drives Georgia's score, but they are still the part most people would recognise. NOAA's Storm Events Database logs the severe weather that brings lines down. Georgia gets a great deal of it: hurricanes and tropical storms from the Gulf and the Atlantic, summer thunderstorms, and the occasional ice storm.

The clearest recent example is Hurricane Helene in September 2024. It tracked inland across Georgia and knocked out power to well over a million customers, one of the worst outage events the state has had. That is the sort of thing the SAIDI and SAIFI numbers are averaging out, and for Georgia the exposure here is really about the weather rather than its plants.

What it means for resilience

Put the two halves together and Georgia comes out unremarkable, well below where the sample had it. Its outage minutes are middling for a storm-prone Southeast, and its fuel mix is one of the broader ones in the country, so concentration is not its problem the way it is for Mississippi or West Virginia. The nuclear at Vogtle adds a big block of firm capacity on top of that.

What nudges Georgia up is the spare-capacity part of the score, and that part still runs on sample peak demand. Real state peak demand would show whether the margin is actually tight or an artefact of the sample. The other gap is the wires. None of this says anything about the transmission network, and for a state that loses power mostly to storms that is probably where the answer is.

Two kinds of number are mixed here on purpose, and kept apart. The rank and score come from this project's index. The outage input is real EIA-861 data for 2023 and the plant capacity is real EPA eGRID data, while peak demand is still a sample figure. The generation, capacity, price and plant figures in the sections above are real throughout, from the EIA, EPA eGRID and NOAA.