AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – A luncheon Thursday gave business and community leaders more information about data centers coming to Augusta.

Georgia Power and QTS representatives attended to help people understand what the project is and how it will impact Augusta. The QTS data center is planned for land near the Haynes Station neighborhood.

They cited the Public Service Commission’s rule that data centers have to pay for 100 percent of their energy usage and upgrades to local grids.

“We heard earlier today about some of the great things that Georgia’s been doing in being able to provide that reliable and affordable power,” said Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition. “And the data center industry is committed to paying for their full cost of service for electricity, including paying for some of those upfront costs when it comes to those grid build-outs.”

The experts said the main thing drawing data centers to Georgia is the availability of land and power. They called Georgia the number one state for data centers.

Kerry Bridges, Georgia Power’s region executive, said the state’s low energy rates — 15% lower than the national average — contribute to that draw.

Bridges said the bill for usage and upgrades to electrical systems go 100% to the data center company and nearby neighbors should not be affected.

“The future looks like a growing Georgia, an economy where everyone across the state can participate, lower utility bills across the country because our wonderful partners are coming to town, they’re bringing the dollars, they’re investing in the electric grid,” Bridges said.

QTS, the company building the data center in Augusta near the Haynes Station neighborhood, said they are building a closed loop system. Each center requires an Olympic-sized swimming pool amount of water to start, but then it recycles that water for the rest of its time in use.

Jeff Greene, senior manager at QTS Data Centers, said QTS now only builds these closed loop centers.

Greene said they plan on each of their six buildings using 18,000 gallons of water a day just for flushing toilets and using sinks after the system is up and running.

“It just stays, it’s like a giant radiator, it will just keep cycling through, the water is heating and cooling constantly over and over again. And that’s a very different water consumption use than what typically used to happen, which was evaporative cooling. QTS went away from evaporative cooling in its data centers back in 2018,” Greene said.

Residents have pushed back against data centers in meetings, questioning how they would affect nearby neighbors. There is currently the QTS data center being built in Augusta, two data centers under construction in Columbia County and one in McDuffie County.