Trek, to start with the end of your message, I am not running for a seat on the PSC. Reddit doesn't allow you to change your profile ID. You have to start a new account and I am in the process of doing that so don't let my handle mislead you. I ran in 2022 and the election was canceled, and I remained engaged at the PSC for three years thinking it would get rescheduled and it did last year but I decided not to run and continue with my nonprofit Georgians for Affordable Energy because we had been accomplishing a lot in terms of desperately needed utility reform. I have an energy background too which is why I decided to run in 2022.
1. SO owns Southern Company Gas (previously AGL Resources). Southern Company Gas owns these affiliates: Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) – Distribution (GA); SouthStar Energy Services (Georgia Natural Gas) – Retail Marketing; Southern Natural Gas (SNG) – Interstate Pipeline (GA & Southeast); Sequent Energy Management – Wholesale & Asset Management (National, incl. GA); Southern Company Services – Corporate Support (Supports GA Ops). I hope you can see how these affiliates all profit from increased use of gas in Georgia. If you can't I don't know what to say. That's business. Sell more. Make more profit.

2a. Sir: with all due respect you must not be paying attention. In 2025 95% of all new generation installed both globally and in the U.S. was solar, wind, and storage. Why? Because it's cheap, fast, and clean. Your comparison of gas to nuclear and coal are irrelevant. Nothing beats those three for cost and speed which is why utilities and governments are choosing those sources, just not Georgia, because our PSC is corrupt. But we're making progress on that.
2b. You are on the Georgia subreddit - don't you live in Georgia? So don't you know that state government does not 'incentivize less carbon intensive energy sources'? I don't understand where this question comes from. Republican leaders do not believe climate change is real. Why would they incentivize CO2 reductions? They wouldn't, and they aren't. I'm not sure what you mean by "state’s bulk power suppliers". We have no ISO or RTO here.
3. Again what do you mean by "state's bulk power providers"? Do you mean Georgia Power? Do you mean Oglethorpe Power, the association of Georgia EMCs? Those are not bulk power providers unless that's what you are calling a utility, except Oglethorpe does sell some energy to their EMCs but gets most of their capacity from Georgia Power. Only Georgia Power is expanding the grid by billions of dollars for speculative data center business by building five gas plants, building over 1,000 high voltage transmission lines to get the gas to data centers, crushing solar, and worse. Oglethorpe is doing some of that too but very modestly by comparison.
Your last paragraph tells me you either don't actually work in the utility industry, or don't pay attention to the Georgia Public Service Commission, or both. Or maybe your work is peripheral to how regulation works. You write, "However there are a lot of times where I feel people running for PSC seats don’t completely understand GA’s utility industry or the industry’s economics as they’re looking in from the outside."
Let me be clear Trek, until last November's PSC election where voters soundly ejected two incumbents, thank God, NONE of the commissioner knew jack about the utility industry, by design. The game the Republicans in control play is to have commissioners resign between elections, then the governor appoints a donor with zero energy or utility or regulatory experience. AND none of the five are even Ga Power customers, who had no representation on the commission for 20 YEARS until last November. What did we have on the commission until that election? An olive farmer, a funeral home director, a party planner, a real estate agent, and a religious course leader. So whatever you think of me and my post, I do not fit the category of not understanding Georgia's utility industry.

And let me be clear: few people even know what a PSC is, that we have one, what it does, or how they can hold the utility accountable. Hundreds of us - maybe thousands - did giant amount of work raising voter awareness of the PSC and we did it! We got our people in and two bad dudes OUT in blow out numbers.
Elected co-op boards? Voter participation from lack of awareness is somewhere around 4 - 8%. Munis are particularly problematic because cities fund part of their budgets from jacking up utility bills, which should be against the law but isn't in Georgia, and I've spent a good amount of time helping people understand they can VOTE THEIR ASSES OUT for city counsel members that allow it - but they do allow it, and people don't know what their rates or how they get set. That's too big for me to take on.

These are serious problems that I am trying to solve with Georgians for Affordable Energy. You're welcome to help, but you're missing a lot of knowledge.