TL;DR · 30-second read

The Short Version

Georgia’s biggest power company is building more than 1,000 miles of new power lines, longer than the drive from Atlanta to New York City. About 80 percent of the new electricity it plans to add is expected to go to data centers, the giant warehouses of computers that run artificial intelligence.

The lines must cross private land: more than 330 properties, including nearly 30 homes that will be torn down. The company starts its offers a quarter above a property’s appraised value and says it rarely forces a sale. But the right to run lines across land usually lasts forever, even after the owner sells.

Fortune reported on July 26, 2026 that Georgia Power is contacting property owners along a 35-mile route through Fayette, Heard, Fulton and Coweta counties for the Ashley Park-Wansley Transmission Project, a new line between its Ashley Park Substation and its plant at Wansley. It is one of five projects that together make up more than 1,000 miles of new transmission in the utility’s plan. That plan spans more than 330 parcels of land and requires nearly 30 residential properties to be leveled.

Georgia Power says land acquisition and easement negotiations are close to complete, with construction as early as 2027. It opens offers at 125% of appraised value and says eminent domain is used in fewer than 1% of its land transactions: five times in the past year, none on homes. The utility disputes describing the line as a data center project. The generation plan it agreed with the Georgia Public Service Commission in December 2025 says about 80% of nearly 10,000 new megawatts is expected to power data centers.

Executive Summary

Georgia Power is acquiring land and easements for one of five transmission projects that together add more than 1,000 miles of high-voltage lines to Georgia’s grid. Transmission lines are the long-distance wires that move bulk electricity from power plants to local substations. The buildout accompanies roughly 10 gigawatts of new generation that state regulators certified in December 2025, and about 80% of that generation is expected to power data centers.

The story matters because it moves the cost of AI-era grid expansion out of abstract rate cases and onto specific parcels of land. Georgia Power argues that large data center customers will pay more, which it projects will cut residential bills by about $102 a year from 2029. That argument does not address the right-of-way. Nearly 30 homes are to be leveled, and permanent easements will cover hundreds of parcels.

How utilities conduct those negotiations shapes how fast AI infrastructure can be powered and on what terms. So does how often they fall back on eminent domain, and how publicly they justify it.

The Rate Math Counts Bills, Not Easements

Georgia Power frames its public case for the buildout around electricity bills. The utility projects that the five transmission projects will save residential customers about $102 a year each starting in 2029. The mechanism is that large-load customers, meaning very big single users such as data centers, are required to pay more. Media Relations Manager Meredith Stone said those funds put “downward pressure on the rates for our residential customers.” That is a claim about tariffs, the prices customers pay, and it is the number the utility leads with.

The land side of the same projects works differently. Delivering power over more than 1,000 miles of new line means securing rights across more than 330 parcels and leveling nearly 30 homes. Georgia Power says it opens negotiations at 125% of appraised value. Where owners grant an easement rather than sell outright, the utility gains a permanent right to use a strip of their land. David Needham, a Georgia attorney who has represented landowners in eminent domain cases for more than a decade, said those rights stay attached to the property after it is sold. They can prohibit permanent structures beneath the lines and can reserve broad rights for the utility to install additional infrastructure.

The per-customer savings figure does not capture that cost. A bill saving is spread across the whole residential customer base and recurs every year. An easement is priced once, at the negotiating table, and its restrictions are carried indefinitely by whoever owns that particular piece of ground. For utilities and data center developers, the consequence is that AI-driven grid expansion depends on hundreds of individual land deals, not only on the generation plan regulators certified. Those deals determine how fast the expansion proceeds and how much public acceptance it wins.

Condemnation Is Rare; the Room to Say No Is Narrow

On the record, condemnation is uncommon. Georgia Power says eminent domain is a last resort that occurs in fewer than 1% of its land transactions. It says the power was used five times in the past year, none involving residential homes. Nothing disclosed contradicts those figures. The case that drew the most public attention also ended in a deal. It became widely known through social media posts by Ansley Brown and involved the office of U.S. Rep. Brian Jack, and Georgia Power said it reached an agreement with the family, without disclosing the terms.

Residents’ description of the process is also consistent with how it works. “We don’t have a choice in this,” Brown said in one video. Once a route is chosen, a landowner’s options are a full sale or an easement, and keeping the line off the property is not one of them. Condemnation stands behind the negotiation as the alternative if talks fail. Needham called the resulting easement agreements “very much tilted in favor of the power company,” while noting that “there is compensation offered.” Both accounts can be accurate: forced takings are rare, and the bargaining position is uneven.

Who the Line Serves Depends on Which Number You Read

Georgia Power says it is “not in the data center business.” It says the Ashley Park-Wansley line will serve the broader needs of the communities and customers who rely on reliable service. CBS reported that 70% to 80% of the power from this particular line would go to AI data centers. A Georgia Power representative was unable to confirm that estimate.

At the portfolio level the question is less open. In December 2025 the Public Service Commission and Georgia Power agreed to certify nearly 10,000 megawatts of new generation, and the agreement said approximately 80% of it is expected to power data centers. Transmission lines are shared assets, and the same wires feed homes, hospitals and server halls. The utility’s framing is therefore defensible for any single line. Still, the regulator-approved document says the new demand justifying this much new capacity comes mostly from data centers.

The distinction matters because eminent domain rests on public use. The more visibly new corridors are tied to a small number of very large customers, the more utilities and regulators have to show the broader benefit. The $102 savings projection plays exactly that role.

Georgia’s Welcome for Data Centers Is Getting Conditional

Georgia hosts more than 200 operational data centers, nearly 170 of them in Atlanta, including facilities owned by Microsoft, Amazon and Google. A sales and use tax exemption dating to 2018 waives 100% of state and local sales and use taxes on equipment purchases for projects that meet a minimum investment of $100 million to $250 million. In 2024 lawmakers voted to suspend new exemptions, and Governor Brian Kemp vetoed the measure. A December 2025 evaluation by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government projected the exemption’s net fiscal impact at roughly negative $574 million.

Georgia is now scrutinizing its tax incentives, charging large loads more, and facing land disputes in public view. The pattern for operators is that the state remains open to data centers but is pricing more of their wider costs explicitly. “The policy direction has clearly shifted,” said J. Thomas Perdue, a policy analyst at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. For developers weighing sites, power in Georgia increasingly comes with public questions about who bears the cost of delivering it.

Background

Georgia Power is the state’s largest electric utility and a subsidiary of Southern Company. It plans its generation and transmission through an Integrated Resource Plan, a long-range forecast of demand and the resources needed to meet it. The plan requires approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission, the elected body that regulates the state’s utilities. The commission approved the 2025 plan, which cited continued power needs driven by AI investment. In December 2025 it certified nearly 10,000 megawatts of new generation. It also approved a formal process to evaluate grid-enhancing technologies that can squeeze more capacity from existing lines.

Georgia has courted data centers since 2018 through sales and use tax exemptions and now hosts more than 200 operating facilities, most of them around Atlanta. Legislative support has cooled: a 2024 vote to suspend new exemptions was vetoed, and a 2025 state-commissioned evaluation found the incentive to be a net fiscal cost. Eminent domain, the power to take private property for public use with just compensation, is available to utilities building infrastructure. Georgia Power says it treats it as a last resort.

Sources

Source: ‘My childhood home is being taken’: Eminent domain for data centers targets properties across a thousand miles of grid expansion in Georgia (Fortune, July 26, 2026). The article reports on Georgia Power’s land acquisition for the Ashley Park-Wansley line and its broader 1,000-mile transmission plan.