Georgia Data Centers

Georgia’s data center story starts at 56 Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta — a carrier hotel that has served as the Southeast’s primary interconnection point for two decades. Operators cluster along the I-285 perimeter in Fulton County and extend into Douglas County (Lithia Springs) and DeKalb County. But the biggest new development is happening 50 miles east in Newton County around Social Circle, where Google, Meta, and Microsoft are building hyperscale campuses on hundreds of acres of former agricultural land with access to Georgia Power’s competitive industrial rates.

Georgia’s 39 data center counties reflect two eras: the legacy Atlanta metro market clustered around Fulton and Douglas counties, and the newer hyperscale corridor extending east along I-20 into Newton and Walton counties. Atlanta’s density comes from enterprise colocation; the eastern buildout is almost entirely hyperscale cloud and AI infrastructure.

Google’s operations in Newton and Douglas counties represent billions in cumulative investment. QTS (Blackstone) operates one of the largest colocation portfolios in the Atlanta metro, while Switch, DataBank, and T5 Data Centers serve the enterprise segment. The hyperscale buildout has shifted Georgia’s operator mix — five years ago the market was primarily colocation; now the largest facilities are single-tenant cloud campuses.

The scale of Georgia’s newest builds dwarfs the legacy Atlanta market. Effingham County alone accounts for 3,200 MW of tracked capacity, driven by hyperscale AI training infrastructure that didn’t exist five years ago. Georgia Power has filed resource plans specifically citing these facilities as a primary growth driver.

Georgia’s High-Technology Tax Exemption waives state sales tax on data center equipment and electricity for facilities investing at least $15 million over five years. That incentive — worth millions per facility annually — continues to attract new entrants alongside the state’s competitive 6–7¢/kWh industrial rates. Google’s Newton County campus, Meta’s Stanton Springs project, and QTS’s Atlanta metro expansion add hundreds of megawatts to a pipeline of 87 facilities statewide.

Georgia’s electricity market is fully regulated under Georgia Power (a Southern Company subsidiary) — no retail choice, but stable, predictable pricing. Industrial rates average 6–7¢/kWh, among the lowest in the Southeast. Data centers benefit from dedicated Large Industrial Service tariffs with demand charges that reward consistent, high-load-factor consumption. Georgia Power has added significant natural gas and solar generation specifically to meet data center growth per its approved 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, which includes 9,885 MW of new generation (approved December 2025). Compare current Georgia electricity rates across service territories.