Transmission construction tied to data center growth in Georgia has moved into eminent domain proceedings, with Georgia Power pursuing property across roughly a thousand miles of planned grid expansion, according to reporting published by Fortune on July 26, 2026.
Data center construction in the state has run ahead of the transmission capacity needed to serve it. Atlanta's data center market closed the first quarter with a vacancy rate near 1%, and campuses under development in Fulton, Douglas and Forsyth counties represent load that has to be delivered over new or upgraded lines. Amazon Web Services has committed at least $5 billion to campuses in Douglas County. Microsoft is building in Palmetto in south Fulton County. T5 Data Centers acquired a 91 acre site in south Fulton for a campus sized at up to 200 MW of critical IT load.
Serving that load requires new transmission corridors, and corridors require land. When a utility and a landowner cannot agree on price or routing, state law permits condemnation of the easement. Property owners along the affected routes have described receiving notices for land held by their families for decades.
The pattern is not confined to Georgia. Utilities in several states with concentrated data center development have moved from voluntary easement purchases to condemnation as construction schedules compress. The regulatory question in each case is who bears the cost of transmission built primarily to serve a small number of very large customers.
Source: Fortune - https://fortune.com/2026/07/26/georgia-power-utility-company-eminent-domain-grid-expansion-data-center/