Georgia Power Opens 49.5 MW Moody Battery Site as Regulator Clears More Than 3,000 MW of Storage
Georgia Power cut the ribbon on the Moody Battery Facility outside Valdosta, Georgia, a 49.5 MW battery energy storage system that can discharge to the grid over a four-hour period. The site in Lowndes County is one of the first Georgia Power storage systems connected to solar, and it matches the output of the nearby Moody solar facility.
The Moody unit is the smallest piece of a much larger buildout. The Georgia Public Service Commission has approved nine additional battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities across eight sites in the state, adding more than 3,000 MW of planned storage.
Those approvals put storage at plants already carrying Georgia Power's thermal and nuclear fleet: Bowen, Hammond, McIntosh, Wansley and Yates, plus stand-alone locations in Hall and McDuffie counties. Two further solar systems paired with battery storage, in Laurens and Dougherty counties, were approved for a combined capacity of 350 MW.
Moody was approved alongside three other battery projects in Bibb, Cherokee and Floyd counties under the 2023 integrated resource plan (IRP) update, a group totaling 715 MW that the utility says is nearing completion.
Rick Anderson, senior vice president and senior production officer at Georgia Power, said the Moody system was finished ahead of schedule. "The successful completion of the Moody Battery Energy Storage System, ahead of schedule, is great news for our customers and for reliable energy in our state," Anderson said. The company credited Crowder Engineering and other contractors on the Lowndes County project.
Georgia PSC Chairman Jason Shaw and Lowndes County Manager Paige Dukes attended the ribbon-cutting, joined by members of the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners and the Valdosta City Council. The announcement was issued from Atlanta on July 27, 2026.
For Southern Company (NYSE: SO), the capital signal sits in the gap between what has been built and what has been sanctioned. Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company and serves 2.8 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties.
The utility is working with the Georgia PSC to widen its generation capacity, adding megawatts through natural gas, battery storage, solar, nuclear uprates and hydropower investments. Its existing fleet spans hydro, solar, battery storage, natural gas, nuclear and coal-fired plants.
Staffing follows the concrete. Georgia Power expects to hire nearly 250 full-time employees to operate the new facilities, on top of more than 3,000 construction jobs over the next few years. The generation organization currently runs with a workforce of more than 1,100 employees.
On reliability, the company reported a measured outage rate of 1.67%, which it describes as among the industry's best. Anderson framed the summer load in operational terms: "When our customers flip the light switch or adjust their A/C systems to just the right temperature this summer, there are thousands of employees working hard to make that happen". Georgia Power marks Generation Appreciation Month each August to recognize production staff.
The portfolio Georgia Power describes covers nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable sources including solar and wind. What the Moody ribbon-cutting establishes is the template: four-hour lithium-ion capacity sited next to existing solar and existing thermal plants, replicated at scale under PSC approval.