Voice of Real Estate
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Voice of Real Estate
Inside Georgia Power's Hurricane Helene Recovery: The Largest Storm in 140 Years
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When Hurricane Helene tore through the Augusta and CSRA region in September 2024, it became the largest storm in Georgia Power's 140-year history — by a factor of six. In this episode of Voices of Real Estate, host Jamie sits down with Kerry Bridges, Georgia Power's Region Executive for the East Region, to take you behind the scenes of one of the most massive power restoration efforts the state has ever seen.
Hey, it's Jamie, the marketing director at Blanchard and Calhoun here for another episode of Voices of Real Estate. Today I'm super excited because I have Carrie Bridges from Georgia Power here, who I have known. Carrie, I mean, I've known you for a good bit, haven't I?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think probably on the order of 10 years or more or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So, I mean, obviously your title when I first met you is different from now. So tell me a little bit about what you're doing now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I have the honor and privilege of serving as Georgia Power's region executive for East Region. Uh, East Region is made up of 11 counties around the Greater Augusta area. Uh, in those 11 counties, we serve about 180,000 meters, if you want to think of it that way, probably about a half a million people behind those meters. And yeah, we uh provide clean, safe, reliable, affordable energy all day, every day to those half a million or so people. And uh, you know, when the weather's at its worst, we often are at our best, and we had the opportunity to really demonstrate that about a year and a half ago or so with Hurricane Helene.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that crazy that it was a year and a half ago? I was talking to a couple of people recently, and I was like, how was that? I felt it it sometimes feels like it was just yesterday, and then to realize um that yeah, we're almost at the two-year mark.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's sometimes in some ways you're right. I mean, it feels like it was yesterday. Uh and in some ways it feels like it was a lifetime ago. Right. Because our community has come so far in the last 18 months. I mean, you think back to where we were when we were in the throes of Hurricane Helene, uh, it was unprecedented times, really. Right. Our community. It turned out uh that this turned out to be the largest storm in Georgia Powers' 140-year history. I'm gonna say that again. Not only was it the largest storm in Georgia Powers 140-year history, it was the largest storm times six. So if you think about that metric, time six in 140 years, it's beyond generational. It'll have impacts on this community for many, many decades to come. And many, many lessons learned too about how to recover in the short term, the medium term, and the long term from natural disasters. I I'll just share this with you. Our prior largest storm was Hurricane Michael. You may remember that about five years or so. Came into the uh the panhandle of Florida. That's right. Uh, almost erased Mexico Beach from the map, and then came into South Georgia. Uh, we replaced uh 2,000 broken power poles in that effort. That was the largest prior storm until Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Helene ended up being 12,300 broken power poles, and so that's why I say it's the largest storm in 140 years, times six.
SPEAKER_02That's I mean, when you put numbers like that behind it, I mean, it's insane. Now, I I mean, obviously, we heard all about it, everything kind of shut down. But for you guys, one of the reasons why we wanted to get you out here is obviously I've heard this story before, and it is such a great story, but I would love for you to share, you know, Georgia Power's efforts during that time, what you guys did, all the, you know, all the people that helped from all over the country and more. Can you kind of take us through that journey?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, let's, you know, I I think I would be missing an opportunity if I didn't say right out of the starting gate that we have one of the best workforces in the country. Um, our team, our entire Georgia Power team, there's about 8,000 employees of Georgia Power. Uh we probably have close to 10,000 retirees across the system. Um, and it is one of the most dedicated and passionate workforces around. You know, and when disaster hits, when the weather's at its worst, you know, our team is headed towards the fire and not away from the fire.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And so I just can't say enough about our people. I can't say enough about the dedication and the passion and really the deep understanding of our business. Uh so people kick into normal mode, which is storm restoration mode when the thing begins. But to go back and start talking about Hurricane Helene, you know, it was projected to come through South Georgia, right across central Georgia and up through Metro Atlanta. And so we were all sort of watching and hoping and praying that it was going to uh maybe move west or east or something significantly. At the end of the day, uh it ended up moving over our area. So we had we knew it was gonna be bad. The models were showing that somewhere in Georgia it was gonna be um catastrophic and probably historic. Uh we we felt like it was gonna be one of the larger storms that we've ever faced before. Uh we had pre-staged about 10,000 people, uh, electric line workers and support staff, sort of in the center of Georgia. We put uh about a third of those folks in Atlanta metro area, about a third of them in Macon, and then we put a third down in Savannah area. And so we felt like we were in a good position to either move west or east based on the track of the storm. And then when the storm, uh just a day or so ahead, decided to move significantly east and and and move over Augusta, uh, we collapsed those 10,000 people over on the eastern half of the state, the southern part of the state, the eastern half of the state. And then we went back to the well and we asked our mutual assistance partners from across the entire country for another 10,000 resources. And so we ended up having it at the at the peak of the response, we ended up having close to 20,000 people uh that we had invited from 35 states in Canada to come help us restore power here in Georgia.
SPEAKER_02So, I mean, that's crazy, right? Do you guys have, because we probably as consumers, I know I've never thought about, oh, I wonder if a storm's coming, what Georgia Powers doing on the back end? Do you guys have like a team that's constantly monitoring, watching the weather, and you know, just kind of saying, all right, here's where we think we need to be.
SPEAKER_00We do. We have a uh a storm center of operations. Uh that storm center uh thinks about how to prepare for and respond to storms all day, every day.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00That's all they do. And if you think about the state of Georgia, it's a big state, right? Right. We've got uh coastal plains, we've got mountains, so we have ice storms, snowstorms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, everything that you can think of. And so I think uh the good news for Georgians, the good news for our customers is we practice storm response often. Uh we have now we're entering thunderstorm season right now and just a couple of weeks away from hurricane season again, starting June the 1st or so. So we practice those storms and we flex our employees across the state to support different parts of the state. And that's one of the things that's really the value of the Southern Company. Think about it that way. So the Southern Company is our parent company, Georgia Power is a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company. So is Alabama Power, Mississippi Power, so is Southern Nuclear, Southern Power, all these different entities uh that can support when uh natural disasters happen. And so we were able to bring people from Mississippi Power, Alabama Power, not only their trucks and their engineers and their line workers, but also things like their poles and their wire and their transformers, because our system is standardized across the southern system. And so we're able to use inventory uh that is sitting on the ground already purchased and paid for across the southern system. And I think that was a big part of why we had enough uh material to get the lights back on. 95% of our customers were restored in eight to ten days, million and a half outages, almost 1.6 million outages across the state of Georgia, because we had vendors who have storm stock that we require them to keep in-house. We have sister operating companies that have poles and wires and transformers and people and trucks and all that sort of stuff, and they flex over and help us. And so to me, that was a shining moment for the Southern Company and for Georgia Power because we were able to leverage our resources in-house as well as bring people from 35 states in Canada to Georgia.
SPEAKER_02Which, how does that work when you're dealing with a disaster like Hurricane Helene, where roads were blocked by trees? And you know, how did you get the people in Savannah and and all over the place to be where they needed to be?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, communication was a challenge. Right. You go back to the moment, um, I'll I'll never forget as long as I live, September 27th, uh 2024, probably four o'clock in the morning to six o'clock in the morning was sort of the peak of our area. And and it was in some ways it was the perfect storm, right? And not in the not in a good way. In the worst possible way, it was the perfect storm. Uh, we had something on the order of 10 inches of rain that was really not associated with Hurricane Haleen, maybe some of it, uh, prior to Hurricane Haleen rumbling through our our our territory and just creating a path of devastation with almost 100 mile an hour winds. And so the ground was saturated and soaked, uh, trees came down everywhere. There are estimates out there, I've heard they they're wide-ranging, but on average, I think we lost something like 30 to 40 percent of our tree cover.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00You know this, there are parts of Augusta specifically, and there's parts of Columbia County and Burke County specifically where we lost 70, 80, and 90 percent of our tree cover. So communication was a challenge for us, right? Um, for the first day or so, uh, we could only send emails uh to get communication out. You couldn't send a text message, you couldn't make a phone call. Uh, as we were traveling around and doing damage assessment to try and understand the situation, how in other words, how many resources do we need? Do we need a hundred people? Do we need a thousand people? Do we need 10,000 people? And the answer ended up being 10,000 people in our region specifically. Uh, of those 20,000 people that I mentioned that we brought from 35 states in Canada, we set up 9,675 beds just in East Region, just in our 11 counties around Greater Augusta to house almost 10,000 guest workers here in our area. And keep in mind, that's in addition to our 7,000 employees that immediately jump into a storm role. So for the first three or so days, we sent our tree crews out. We had pre-staged a lot of tree crews in the area. We knew that was going to be a tremendous need. And we sent our tree crews out to help our cities and counties and our really partner organizations clear roads so that when by the time that the line resources, the line workers and support staff arrived, we could do the damage assessment piece, clear the roads and immediately put them to work. One of the things that I remember after the hurricane is that the weather was beautiful, right? It's the strangest thing in the world. I mean, it's it's it's the worst weather followed by the best weather. And so we had two weeks or so of just fantastic weather without a drop of rain falling, which allowed us, thankfully, to accelerate the restoration process. Our folks work from sunup to sundown and beyond pretty much 16 hours a day. Our line workers work about 16 hours a day, day after day after day, for probably close to a month to uh restore power. But yeah, so we pre-storage pre-stage resources. We invite other resources, and then we're pretty nimble and flexible. We can bring in more. We can shift once the work gets completed here. We shift those uh workers to other parts of the state and go back and think about this, right? So Hurricane Helene not only rumbled through our area, it went up into North Carolina and created sheer devastation in pieces and parts, especially around Asheville, where you got those mountains and that mountainous terrain.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00So we released resources that went north to help up there once we were done with them. We also had Hurricane Milton coming in on the hills of Hurricane Helene. And we were all hoping and praying that Hurricane Milton was going to go that way. That's right. And not this way. So Florida had three and a half million customers without power while we were in the process of restoring one and a half million customers, almost 1.6 million customers that were impacted just on the Georgia Power system from Hurricane Halene.
SPEAKER_02So, how do you guys navigate moving people from one disaster to the other, right? Obviously, we've got all the all of our stuff here. Like you said, you had pre-stage um items and crew here, luckily. Um, but what happens when you need more materials or that material has to go to the next place? You know, how how does all of that work? Like, is there not a lot of paperwork involved?
SPEAKER_00And you know, just I can say this there's not a lot of bureaucracy involved. I mean, we are flexible, fast, and nimble when our customers are out. We are moving resources quickly to restore power just as quickly as possible because when you see those line trucks show up in your neighborhood, hope has arrived. That's right. That is not an uh an overstatement. Truly, hope has arrived. Um, we we brought in so many people from so many states on a regular basis. People come up to me, even to this day, we're a year and a half or more out, and people will say, Carrie, you know, I think it's the coolest thing in the world. A line crew from Montana got my lights back on here in Augusta, Georgia, after the hurricane, or Massachusetts, or Canada, or Nevada, or California. Right. We brought in resources from as far away as California to help us restore power and normalcy. But moving materials is uh, it's almost like an orchestrated effort. It's pre-planned in many cases, uh, and it's all ran by our centralized storm center in Atlanta, in our corporate headquarters in Atlanta. We have a regional storm center that we set up here in our operating headquarters, and our local leaders are sort of like the play callers here locally. But the storm center coordinates activities across the entire state of Georgia and in some ways across the entire Southern Company system. Uh so if we ask for 500 more resources or 5,000 more resources or whatever, or 5,000 more poles, because we realize that we have 10,000 broken poles, that Storm Center goes to work and there is a team behind them that is in purchasing and manpower and logistics and trucks and materials and fleet operations and transformers and poles and wires and all those sorts of things to make sure that they deliver that material ahead of the work crews getting there. So when the crews show up, the work gets done. We don't want them waiting on anything.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And so we spent probably something after Hurricane Helene, something on the order of five or more days with engineers in the field from all over the state, right? That they're very familiar with the Georgia Power system doing damage assessment. They go out and they ride the poles, the lines, they count the number of broken poles, they're looking for the size of the poles, they're looking for the transformer size, they're looking for the wire size, they're looking for the framing specifications on the poles and documenting all that. And then they bring that back to the headquarters and the engineering team, that the local storm center team, puts a work packet together so that when a 30-person crew arrives from Pick a State, Oklahoma, we immediately put them to work and assign them a circuit, and they work specifically on that circuit, starting at the substation out until all power is restored. And so there is, it's it's like an orchestra, right, of different utilities from all across the country working side by side and shoulder to shoulder to restore hope to our local communities.
SPEAKER_02Well, and clearly as a customer, we don't, you know, we don't get to necessarily know all of that or see all of the magic that's happening in the background. But like when you're putting it into words and you're telling me about it, I mean, it really is amazing. Um, and I will say after during and after Helene, I felt like people could not say more like to praise Georgia Power and you know, all the linemen and people that were here helping and just trying to get us all back up and running. Um, and it felt like such a sense of community during that time, you know. It it just felt so good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank thank you for saying that and and recognizing our team. I mean, I I'll say it again, I said it before, we have the best team in the business. We have the most dedicated, passionate, driven people in the business. And at the core of what we do, they're there to serve our customers. Right. We're there to serve our communities. Uh, and so, you know, we heard that feedback also, interestingly, from people that we brought from those 35 states and Canada across the country. I went to every staging site that we set up. We set up um almost like a small city to house electric line workers, uh, to feed them, to wash their clothes with sleeper trailers and material yards. It's like a makeshift hardware store for materials to restore power. We set up uh 12 staging sites just in our 11 counties here in East Region.
SPEAKER_02Crazy.
SPEAKER_00With 9,675 beds that all had laundry access, food, beds, all of it, right?
SPEAKER_02Shower.
SPEAKER_00Food, everything, right? Uh, and our our our guest workers that we invited from all across the country to come to Georgia, uh, as I was touring each staging site and shaking hands and just telling people thank you. Thank you for putting your life down on hole for a few weeks and coming to help us. The feedback that we got was, you know, we've not been treated like this anywhere else before. Wow. And we call it Southern style, right? It's the Southern company, we call it Southern style. And so we're gonna treat people with respect, we're gonna give them the tools they need, we're gonna make sure their conditions are the best, uh, and we find that we get the most out of them. And I think that's reflective in the comments from the community that you've heard and both I've heard on a regular basis. It is really humbling uh to be uh, you know, a leader at Georgia Power and represent so many people that work so hard because people see me in the community and they say, Thank you, Carrie, for what you did. And I say, Let me tell you, there is a dedicated group of people behind me. Some of these people had trees on their own homes. Right. They had issues at home, they didn't have power either. Sure. Right, and they left all that to come serve our customers. And to me, that's what makes what we do in the electric industry different than other people. That's right, different industries.
SPEAKER_02No, it I mean, it really was super impressive because you know, I think in any industry, you have the people who complain. And I think in that sense, everyone understood that we were all going through it. We were all none of no one had power, text messaging wasn't working, um, and we just needed, like you said, somebody to pull up and us go, they're here, they're gonna get us back up and running. And that's what happened, right?
SPEAKER_00And it does take a community, right? Uh, you know, we can restore all the power, uh, get every customer back on uh and still not be done with the mission, right? Because the the community is still struggling to recover at that point. And so not only do we restore power, we support the community for things like food insecurity and housing insecurity, and have since supported insurance insecurity and things like that. We we were able to do uh a series of grants almost immediately. Uh this is one of the things that I love about our company and our industry. Uh, we have a uh a foundation, the Georgia Power Foundation, we have a Southern Company Foundation, and we have a Southern Company Gas Foundation. So these those three foundations came together probably within a week of understanding the scope and scale of Hurricane Helene and the statewide impacts, and we're able to cobble together $3 million for Hurricane Helene recovery for the communities that were in the immediate path of Hurricane Helene. And here locally, we were able to do 11 grants for $25,000 to organizations that support just basic human needs, whether it was the food insecurity, the housing insecurity, or whatever, just to help the community get back on its feet. And I think that our community partners, I you can't go without mentioning a United Way, you can't go without mentioning Golden Harbor. That's right. You can't go without mentioning Salvation Army and the Red Cross and all of those organizations that rallied community support and resources from all over the country to come to Augusta and help our community. I was really proud of our community. I think you said it well. It was selfless. Everybody was going through it. We were all shoulder to shoulder, so we recognized the obstacles and hurdles that we had to overcome to get back to normalcy. And I also think that it's important to recognize our community leaders.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Our community leaders were right side by side with us, standing shoulder to shoulder and making sure that we had access to whatever we needed. I mentioned earlier that we set up 12 staging sites just here in East Region. We had 34 staging sites and several COT sites statewide. The most staging sites we've ever had in company history prior to was six. We set up 34 staging sites and COT sites across the state, 12 just here in East Region, right? And every community leader that I called or one of one of our teammates called and said, Hey, can we have the James Brown Arena parking lot? Absolutely. Right. Can we have the Augusta Mall? Absolutely. Can we have the Hepsibah Agricultural Center? Absolutely. Can we have the Columbia County Fairgrounds or the Exhibition Center? Absolutely. What do you need from us? And so overnight, practically, we were able to set up 12 cities to receive those thousands of workers, but we couldn't have done it without the relationships that we've built over the last decade or so with our key community leaders. They didn't hesitate to call us, we didn't hesitate to call them. Those relationships were already built. We were just leveraging for the good of our communities and our customers so that we could set up those support state sites across the region.
SPEAKER_02And thank goodness you were able to, right? Um I'm sure that made the process so much better. But speaking of leaders, um, wasn't Georgia Powers president and CEO in town during all of that as well?
SPEAKER_00She was. Absolutely. She she not only toured uh Augusta, which was likely the hardest hit area. Uh I mentioned that we had uh we We replaced 12,300 broken poles. 6,000 of those poles were right here in East Region alone. So we were the center of devastation.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00She toured Savannah, she toured Valdasta, she toured Statesboro, she toured Augusta. That's amazing. Just in day within days to make sure that we had the resources that we needed. And uh, you know, I witnessed, I was with her, with Kim Green, and uh I witnessed her talking to customers and talking to local leaders and just ensuring them that we are going to stay with this until we get it done. We're gonna provide all of the people, all of the resources to get this done. Uh, and I think that was just so greatly appreciated for her to see it with her own eyes and go back and ask for more resources immediately after seeing it. She's commented that it's the worst storm she's ever seen in her entire career.
SPEAKER_02Wow. That's I mean, I think we're all glad that it's over. I know you and I kind of chatted before we started about just how it's kind of still lingering a little bit, but that we're kind of maybe far enough away that we can look back and just be grateful that everything kind of worked out um the way it did. But um, a couple of things I did also want to mention that you've you've talked to me about and to the lantern Calhoun about is some of the cool stuff that you guys did during Hurricane Helene. Like um, wasn't there an issue with communication? I know we talked about that, but you guys had to put something up in the air. Can you talk a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, who knew that Georgia Power had a flying CAL?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Right? And it just don't tell everybody that CAL is an acronym for cellular all-wheels, okay? So we have uh through our sister organization, again, the value of the Southern Company, our sister organization, Southern Link, uh several of our communication towers that our crews use to talk to each other and talk to our distribution control center that controls the power flow. It's critical communication. We have to have it. Several of those tower sites were destroyed.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, I've I've shared pictures with you of those towers crumpled up on the ground with a Southern Link hot air balloon in the background with cellular equipment hanging from the hot air balloon on the background, uh, on the hot air balloon there. But uh our sister organization, the Southern Link, deployed those cellular units on wheels, brought them out, put them into the air so that we could begin restoration. And those are the things that you just don't think about, right? You just don't think about what happens if the communication system goes down because we're so reliant and it's reliable, we don't think about not having it. That's right. So those are some of the things that we had to do. We also have, you know, helicopters that fly with uh saws on the bottom of those helicopters that trim trees off of transmission lines. Uh we had something on the order of 345 transmission structures across the state that we had to replace or repair. And in my career, I don't, I can't even think of a storm where we had more than 30. This was 345 transmission structures that had to be replaced or repaired. And that's not something that the public sees or really thinks about. Right. But for five days, we did nothing but send our crews out and restore those transmission lines so that we could bring the power from the generator, wherever it is, here into Augusta to the substations. At the same time, we had distribution crews, ours, and from elsewhere working from the substation fence to the house meter, restoring all that. And so that's why the numbers, the outage numbers significantly went down after about four or five days, is because the transmission system was back up and running. We've got some local heroes here, some of our transmission maintenance supervisors and transmission maintenance managers who really led the charge and worked 20 hours a day to get that transmission voltage back up so that we could supply energy to the substations and you could begin seeing hope and normalcy return to our communities at that point. But there's so many unsung heroes. Again, our our workforce is so passionate, so knowledgeable first, so passionate, so dedicated. I I mentioned to you earlier that our linemen work something on the order of 16 hours a day, seven days a week until the the threat has passed. Our leaders probably work something on the order of 18 hours a day.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00And they have to be there about an hour early. Sure. They have to be stay about an hour late. And then after about four or five days of that, uh, we were able to bring in uh additional resources who do the exact same job just somewhere else in the state of Georgia and break those people out and give them a break so they could go home and take care of their families and get some rest. And then two or three days later they came back to work and started that process all over again.
SPEAKER_02That I mean, you just again, you just don't think about what they're going through as well, being away from their families, working those long hours for us. Right? They some of them have gained nothing but they're helping us get our power back up, which is just it is, it's it's amazing, and and I think our community's super grateful for that. Um, I wanted to also mention, um, I know we talked about the flying cow. Yeah. Um, but tell us also about the drone. I mean, don't you guys have like a drone that flies over water and does all kinds of cool stuff? Can you can you speak to that a little bit?
SPEAKER_00We we have a fleet really of drones, and and they're everything from a drone in a box to a drone the size of your kitchen table. Which is crazy. And I think the really great thing is we have uh, you know, typically people come to work for Georgia Power as a lineman. They may be 20 years old, they stay 30 years, and then they're ready to retire. Well, a lot of our best and brightest at that point will move to be drone pilots because they know the system so well. They built the system. So they know every piece and part of the system, they know how it works, they know what to look for. We transition them into drone pilots if they're interested. And so they fly drones and inspect the wires, inspect the lines, and they do that every single day. That is their job every single day. So when a storm hits, we leverage that drone fleet and those drone operators and their experience to access inaccessible areas. You think back to Helene, you couldn't go more than 100 yards down any road in Augusta or Columbia County or Burke County or McDuffie County because the roads were covered up with trees. Right. And so we deployed our drone pilots right behind the tree crews to go do damage assessment and things like that. But in during throughout the response, we try to leverage as much technology as we can to speed restoration. That flying cow is a prime example. Right. That flying cellular unit in a hot air balloon is a prime example. And then we use drones the size of your kitchen table. Uh, we'll connect rope to those drones. They're powerful, so they can lift a lot of weight. So we use a rope because it's lighter than the wire, and we may pull that uh rope across a pond, or we may pull it across an inaccessible right-of-way where a bunch of trees are laying. And then we tie that rope to the wire and then tie that rope to the winch and winch the wire back across that span. And so it speeds restoration so significantly. Not only is it our eyes and ears for damage assessment, it's also uh the work, the workhorse behind speeding restoration and moving that heavy wire. Whereas, you know, say 20 years ago, we would have either had to get a marshmaster or a uh a four-wheeler or a side-by-side, or a human would have to go pull that rope across that that span and then tie the wire to it and pull it back. Now we can use that drone to almost within minutes accomplish the same thing. And I've got a great picture that I've shared with you of one of our linemen is up in the air in a bucket, and he's and the drone took a picture of him, he's smiling really big. That's right. Because he's waiting on the drone to bring him that rope. If it was five or ten years ago, he would have had to figure out how to get across that that pond, whether it was with a boat or whether that rope was tied to his belt loop to get that rope across that pond.
SPEAKER_02That is wild. I know, and and I think that's why I wanted to bring some of these up because, you know, again, people just don't know what's happening behind the scenes and all the great technology and what you guys are sharing. Um, I did want to also mention that we're we're talking about all the resources that went into this, right? The 20,000 people that were here, the the various staging sites, the food, the all the supplies that are in. Obviously, that costs money, right? And the general public, I think they they tend to assume that that means, all right, well, that means our power bill's gonna go up because it's gotta pay pay for it somewhere. Can you kind of elaborate a little bit on that?
SPEAKER_00Your your question is perfectly timed because as you and I are talking here today, the Public Service Commission and Georgia Powers working together and having a hearing on how do we recover the cost to get the lights back on in Georgia from Hurricane Helene and other storms along the way, but Hurricane Helene was obviously the largest amount of that. Uh so the discussion that's going on right now is we have prep we have actually signed a stipulated agreement with the Public Service Commission staff, which um if the Public Service Commission votes that through maybe later today, we'll actually lower customers' bills, something on the order of $50 a year starting in June of this year. So how is that possible, right? So the math it and mathing, right? Something's not not adding up here, right? So you if you guys remember, you think back to probably five or six or seven years ago when inflation was eight, nine percent interest rates in your industry, uh, one of the strangleholes was they were five or six percent. And so house sales really slowed down, the cost of everything went up.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Well, the cost of fuel for our generators, whether that's natural gas or uh nuclear material or coal or whatever, whatever drives that generator, the cost of all that went up as well. And so we have some protections in place to make sure that we can cover our fuel account, uh, which is a straight pass-through. We don't make one dime, one penny off of fuel. If we spend a dollar, we collect a dollar from our ratepayers, it's held separately from base rates to protect ratepayers uh from any additional cost from any excessive cost. That fuel rider kicked in, it was 15%, and now we've almost recovered back to, think about your old checkbook, we've recovered back to a zero balance, and so we're asking for that fuel rider to expire. And so that fuel portion will come down. We're gonna recover Hurricane Halene cost over a significant period of time over many years to minimize the impact to our customers. And so the net between fuel cost expiring and hurricane Halene is gonna be about $4, a little more than $4 a month, almost $50 a year. And I think that's a great point. I mean, Georgia Power takes affordability seriously.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Uh, you know, $50 a year is significant. We've also committed to freezing base rates. I mentioned you got the fuel portion of your bill and you got the base rate portion of your bill. We've committed to freeze base rates throughout 2026, the rest of this year, throughout all of 2027, throughout all of 2028. We've also already committed to save our customers more than $100 a year starting in 2029. And the the reason that we can do that is because Georgia's growing at an unprecedented rate. Uh, you go back to December of last year, 2025, the Public Service Commission approved for Georgia Power to add 9,900 additional megawatts of generation. Some of that has already come to life across Georgia and here in our region. Just recently, we broke ground on a very cool piece of technology, a battery energy storage system down in Jefferson County, just outside the city of Wadley. That's going to be a 250 megawatt system that's going to store energy in off-peak times and deliver energy to the grid during on-peak times completely carbon-free. And so you're seeing these generation assets come to life. And the reason that we can commit to these rates uh lowering rates and rates subsiding over the next few years when some of our peer utilities are actually asking for rates to rise, is because of the growth in Georgia. We have several large customers come into our state, whether they're manufacturing or data center or cyber focused, and the Public Service Commission has put some protections in place to make sure that there's no cost shifting allowed from the cost to serve those customers and our existing 2.8 million customer base, when in fact we're actually recovering all the cost to serve those customers for the good of our other customers. So it allows us to lower existing customer rates. So growth is good for Georgia. Right. And the Public Service Commission in Georgia was very wise to put protections in place early in this process to make sure that no cost shifting happens across the system.
SPEAKER_02Well, and so say that again for the people who go, Well, it's $100 a year. I mean, is that really helping me? Remind us about your customer base and how many people you guys serve.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so the fuel reduction that that will be voted on, we hope later today and approved is $50 a year for 2.8 million customers.
SPEAKER_022.8 million customers.
SPEAKER_00And all of our 2.8 million customers across the state also get the benefit of freezing our base rates for 2026, 2027, and 2028. And we've already committed for the next rate case cycle, which is kicked off in 28 and finalized in 2029, to save our customers more than $100 a year. All 2.8 million customers more than $100 a year in 2029. So rates are headed in the right direction in Georgia. And again, I give a lot of credit to our public service commission for the foresight that they had to put rules and regulations in place to protect our existing customers from any cost shifting and in fact benefit from the growth that's coming to Georgia. I think they wanted to see all of Georgia benefit from the growth, not just a few in Georgia benefit from the growth. And so we we almost um we almost uh collect enough dollars from our large customers to lower rates on those 2.8 million existing customers.
SPEAKER_02That's fantastic. I mean, and how great is that? I mean, that's really great.
SPEAKER_00Um it's great news, and I think the challenge for us in Georgia and at Georgia Power is not all utilities operate that way. Right. And so, you know, what we like to say is not in Georgia. You see rates going up across the country. You see um challenges for power availability across the country because of the growth that's happening right now, but not in Georgia. We have such a thoughtful, complicated process that we go through every 36 months, every three years with the Public Service Commission, where we assess Georgia's generation needs for the next 20 years. We assess Georgia's transmission needs for the next 10 years, and we assess Georgia's customer program needs like energy efficiency and affordability programs and things like that for the next three years. We do that every three years. And so we're always able to look at the landscape and adjust accordingly. Whether we've built too much generation or planning to build too much generation or not enough, we have the opportunity to true it up every three years. And in fact, we actually have that opportunity every 18 months if we want to. We filed a mid-cycle IRP 18 months in because we saw the generation needs in Georgia rising so dramatically, and that allowed us to be able to quickly react and put generation and trans uh transmission assets on the ground to serve the customers that come to our territory. And there's one more really important part there. And so if these projects uh make it through the planning and zoning process, they're issued a building permit, they're issued a land disturbance permit, so on and so forth, and they're in Georgia Power's assigned territory across the state, Georgia Power is compelled to serve those customers. We have an obligation to serve those customers, it's not a choice at that point.
SPEAKER_02That's great. Carrie, you guys are doing just wonderful things. And just from knowing a bunch of people who work at Georgia Power, you're right. You know, they're very proud to work there. Um, and I've only heard great things and good feedback. Um, and I know you guys are always looking for people to join Georgia Power, right? What what what are you guys looking for?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So we we, you know, but at our core, uh we are a science and math company, right? But there are all sorts of jobs at Georgia Power. Would you believe we employ nurses? We we employ a lot of accountants, we employ a lot of uh trade type uh jobs, craft jobs, labor jobs, right? Lineman jobs, a lot of metermen jobs, a lot of uh fleet jobs. So what's one of our our our areas of focus right now is our fleet operations because Georgia's growing, because Georgia power is growing, our fleet is growing, and our fleet is made up of pickup trucks and cars and line trucks and bucket trucks and boats and swamp uh marshmasters and four-wheelers and side by sides and on and on and on the list goes. And so we have to have people that can deploy on a storm, follow that storm team, and take care of any needs, whether it's hydraulic or engine related or truck or tire related, and be able to keep those crews running. And so we're recruiting heavily with our fleet organization right now as we grow. And so we are growing. You know, we are probably around 8,000 employees statewide. Uh, we're headed for probably 8,500 employees by year end, and that doesn't count the people that are retiring after a long, happy career. So we're gonna hire several hundred people this year, and I would just encourage anybody that's looking for a job, anybody that's looking for a challenging career, anybody that's looking for a great place to work, go to poweringcareers.com. That's poweringcareers.com. And there are videos on there, video testimonials. And what we've done is we've taken employees that are two years, five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years into their career, no matter what their career is at Georgia Power, and ask them a series of questions like, How did you get here? What training did you uh complete? What certificate did you complete? What degree did you complete to get you in this job? What does the day look like? What does a day in the life of your job look like? What do you think your future opportunities look like at Georgia Power? What do you want to do in five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years? And so they kind of run through the entire gamut of hiring school and hiring and training all the way to retirement as to what these careers and jobs could look like. Also on PoweringCareers.com, there's a link to our uh Southern Company Careers website, and you can see what jobs are posted. You can see the requirements for the jobs, and you know, I'll use myself as an example. When I decided I wanted to work for Georgia Power, I started following the Southern Company.com jobs board, and I picked out a few jobs that I thought I was qualified for, and I started looking at the actual requirements. And over time I continued to check off more and more and more until I was a viable candidate for a job at Georgia Power. So it's real, it works, and it's the best information to figure out where your place is in the company.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Well, Carrie, I want to also um just we'll see if you want to touch on this. You shared a story um during Helene about specifically the crew that came from Canada, that there was kind of a funny story there. Uh do you want to share that story with us?
SPEAKER_00I will. I I'm gonna share a couple of stories from Hurricane Helene, if it's okay. Absolutely. These are sort of the untold stories of Hurricane Helene. Uh, you know, we had crews, I said it earlier, that came from all across the country to help respond. You know, our industry is inherently dangerous. Yeah. What we do is dangerous, right? We're up in the bucket 30 feet, 40 feet, or 250 feet, working on somewhere between uh 4 KV to maybe 500 KV, 500,000 volts of potential. So safety is a core value of ours. It has to be uh the first thing that we think about when we wake up in the morning and the last thing that we think about at the end of the day. So, as such, we train on safety all the time. We had a crew in from somewhere across the country. Uh, and you know, Hurricane Helene was such a stressful time for our community. Uh, people were going through emotional trauma, some physical trauma, uh, and some a combination of the two. So we had a crew that was out working one day. Um, somebody came out of a house and flagged them down and said, I'm having trouble breathing, I'm having trouble uh focusing, and collapsed in front of them. So the crew responded because they had been trained with CPR and first aid and how to use an AED and all that sort of stuff, and was able to help that customer of ours. Uh and so the situation turned out good. Another story, uh, one of my favorite stories, is there was a pretty good-sized crew from Alabama that came over and helped us Alabama Power, uh, I believe. And they were working on a street for a couple of days, and one of the little boys that lived on that street was really just fascinated with Georgia Power or the Alabama Power crew and the bucket trucks and all that sort of stuff. And I think one of the guys got to talking to him and figured out that his birthday was coming up in the midst of Hurricane Helene, right? Uh, and so they said, What are you gonna do for your birthday? And he said, Well, it's gonna be, you know, I don't know. My mom says it's gonna be a tough year, you know, because of the circumstances. No power, couldn't travel anywhere. So the crew passed the hat, raised some money, and bought gifts and brought them back to the kid, and they had a birthday party on the street for him.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00The the, you know, our our motto as a company is. We are a citizen wherever we serve, wherever the job sends us, we're gonna be a citizen of the community. We're gonna be servants of the community. And to me, that's like the finest example of serving the community when the community needed us the most.
SPEAKER_02That makes me kind of tear up a little bit. You know, that's such a sweet story.
SPEAKER_00I know. Yeah, the the uh yeah, it it it it really is. Those are the things that happen out there that don't always make it up to leaders in the community, but uh there's some great pictures out there of the crew standing with the the the little boy. That's awesome. And they've all they've all got their gifts and they're handing them to him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I'm glad you shared that because I mean just hearing stuff like that just again goes back to your culture, you know, what you guys believe in, and just how you want to help our community.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and then our our the last story is the the crew from Canada. Yeah. So this is my favorite story, you know. Uh Canada Canada's got some some tough terrain, right? Right. So they it's cold, the conditions are harsh, it's cold, it's mountainous, um, it's uh uh desolate sometimes, right? And so our friends from Canada, uh, when they got here to work, the first statement when they got out of their trucks was, hey, sure is hot here, eh? I said, yeah. If you remember back to after the hurricane, it really was warm. Right. Uh we had a warm stretch. I mean, it was probably, you know, mid eight to high eighties, even though it was late September and early October. Uh, and so we put that crew to work. We put them on some of the hardest working folks that you'll ever come across, really knew their job well, used to working in tough conditions and really just made incredible progress during the time that they were assigned. And so we found out that it's so hot in Georgia that sometimes some of those Canadian crew members take their clothes off, right? And so what we figured out is it was probably best if we sent that crew from Canada way out into the country as that they're working on some harsh conditions out there. Of course, nothing unsafe, right? But uh really good fun. And then we had we had some good hearted times in some of our staging sites with our American crews, with our local crews from all over the country, and our our friends from Canada that came to help us out as well. And you know, and it takes probably about three days in a bucket truck driving all day long to make it from Canada to Georgia. Wow. The good news is there were a lot of resources available because we were uh Hurricane Helene was like the only natural disaster that was happening at that time, and we don't often think about that. But sometimes you go back to the ice storm earlier this year. Uh, it started in Mississippi and Louisiana, went all the way through North Georgia, Alabama, up to Tennessee, and then up the East Coast. You know, we were struggling for resources because everybody needed resources. Right. During Hurricane Helene, we were one of the only utilities that was heavily impacted. Some of our friends to the south, some of our friends to the west and north were impacted, but we were able to get help from all four corners of the country to help us restore normalcy to our communities.
SPEAKER_02Just so every time I hear the story, is you know, no matter how many times I hear it, it still pulls uh because you guys really, you guys are great. We are we're so grateful to have you at Georgia Power, um, Southern Company just support our community the way you guys have, and of course, all the people that you guys brought in to get us back up and running. Um so in closing, I wanted to say again, thank you so much for you know, I know you're a busy, busy person, so to come out here and spend an hour with me, so appreciative. But please tell like our, you know, our community what's something you you want our community members to know? What's something you know you just want to stress to them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you know, Georgia Power is here for you. When the weather's at its worst, we are often at our best, and we really had the opportunity to demonstrate that for the state, the community, and the country during Hurricane Helene. Um, you know, we a lot of things went really well. We restored 95% of a million and a half outages in eight to ten days. That almost sounds uh impossible. Right. But we were able to do that. Here in East Region, we had 99% of our customers out. 99% of our 180,000 customers experienced an electrical service interruption. It took a little longer to get the lights back on here because we were the center of devastation. But just know that our team is dedicated, passionate, capable, uh, and ready to serve when the weather is at its worst. And I think another thing that's top of mind right now is affordability for everybody. I mean, gas prices are are going, gasoline prices are going back up. And Georgia Power has taken the affordability challenge uh seriously. We've committed to lowering rates over the next several years. That is not necessarily the case in different parts of the country. Uh we've also committed to deliver the megawatts, the generation, the transmission that uh Georgia needs to continue to be the best state in the country to do business. We have a thoughtful process that we go through on a regular basis, on a periodic basis with our partners at the Public Service Commission to plan, deliver, and then pay for those assets. And in doing all of that, in adding 10,000 almost additional megawatts in the next six, seven, eight years, in adding the transmission that we need, we're able to freeze and even lower base rates for our customers across the state. That doesn't happen by accident. You have to have good partners, you have to have capable people, good planning, and good execution. And so I would just say in closing, we are a citizen wherever we serve. We're here to serve Georgia. We've demonstrated it. We've learned lessons from store from uh storms the size of Hurricane Helene that will apply. And so we'll be even better if we ever have another uh storm of that size. But we don't have one anytime in the near future. But thanks for letting me represent, you know, 8,000 dedicated, capable folks at Georgia Power, passionate folks who live in all four corners of the state and really are a part of their community. It is humbling for me to hear thank you often, knowing that our team is the one that does the work, does the heavy lifting, and really provides the mental horsepower that it takes to get all this done.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Well, thank you, Carrie, and uh we will see you guys next time.