A summer power outage in Georgia can disrupt far more than comfort. Without electricity, homes quickly become hotter, food can spoil, sleep gets harder, and remote work may no longer be possible.
For some Georgia Power customers, that experience is not a rare emergency but a recurring pattern driven by rising power bills.
Here’s what to know
Inside Climate News reported that the Energy and Policy Institute found Georgia Power ranked 10th in the nation for utility disconnections in 2024, with 187,007 among nearly 2.5 million customers.
Georgia Power’s parent, Southern Company, separately reported about 273,800 residential disconnection events in 2025, a figure that reflects repeat cutoffs and account turnover, not just unique households.
Customers are absorbing higher bills since nuclear-powered Plant Vogtle came online and as Georgia Power pushes for additional power resources to serve growing demand from data centers. In summer, when air conditioners run longer, the higher costs can more easily lead to unpaid balances.
Donica Odell, a Georgia resident who works full-time for a law firm, said her bill rose from a winter average of about $120 to nearly $600 in one month. For homeowners who can install it, solar is one of the strongest ways to cut home energy costs, and readers can use EnergySage to compare quotes and get free installation estimates.
Customers who get behind on payments can wind up on the utility’s PrePay plan, where a quarter of every payment chips away at past-due debt and the rest covers future electricity use. If the account falls below zero, service can be shut off until a payment brings it back up to $5 or more, and that can happen multiple times in a month.
Odell described it this way: “It really is a brutal cycle.”
More background
The Public Service Commission oversees Georgia Power, and rules there mean the utility can’t cut off residential customers over unpaid bills during extreme heat, that protection is short-term and depends on county-level advisories or warnings; once those expire, shutoffs can resume.
Customers using deferred payment arrangements like PrePay are not covered by those heat protections. The World Health Organization has warned that going without air conditioning during extreme heat increases exposure to dangerously hot indoor temperatures and raises the risk of heat-related illness.
A California study tracking 300,000 low-income households tied each additional 95-degree day to a 1.6% rise in electricity costs and a 1.2% higher chance of disconnection over the following 51 to 75 days.
Barreca, one of the study’s authors, said, “Disconnections could just be the canary in the coal mine for all the financial troubles families are enduring.”
Every utility on the top-10 disconnection list for 2024 was located in the Southeast.
What can be done?
Barreca said a bigger cushion of subsidies and government assistance could lower the odds of disconnection. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has proposed eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, though lawmakers have kept it funded so far.
For households planning for the long term, EnergySage offers free tools that can help. With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations, and EnergySage’s solar map shows average home solar system costs by state along with solar incentives available in each one. Together, those resources can help readers find strong prices on rooftop solar panels and identify available incentives.
Combining solar with battery storage is one of the best ways to protect a home during outages, cut energy costs, and go off grid. It can also keep essential appliances running during a grid failure, and readers can explore EnergySage for details on home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
After years of recurring shutoffs, Odell summed it up this way: “Summer disconnections are truly unbearable.”
Where can I learn more?
Georgia’s shutoff problem is tied to bigger forces shaping power bills far beyond a single missed payment. These stories look at scrutiny over how utilities spend customer money and how rising demand from cryptocurrency mines and data centers can push costs higher, making solar a more appealing option for some households.
• Watchdogs say U.S. utility companies are spending electricity bills in ways customers may never see.
• Watchdogs say some utility companies were using your money to keep electricity bills stubbornly high.
• In the West South Central region, cryptocurrency mines were driving electricity demand and raising prices.
• In Great Britain, data centers are driving up electricity demand as utilities pursue more generation.
• For some homeowners, cut ties with utility companies means lower bills but harder daily tradeoffs.
They paint a clearer picture of how billing practices, utility spending, and surging demand can leave households with less control over something as basic as electricity. That’s part of why rooftop solar and home batteries are starting to look less like extras and more like practical tools.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
Dining and Cooking