Georgia Power has switched on the Moody Battery Facility, a 49.5 megawatt battery storage system just outside Valdosta in Lowndes County, Georgia. The system can discharge power back to the grid over four hours and is paired with the nearby Moody solar facility, matching that plant's output.
Georgia Power announced the completion in a July 27 release, saying the project finished ahead of schedule. Georgia Public Service Commission Chairman Jason Shaw and Lowndes County Manager Paige Dukes joined members of the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners, the Valdosta City Council and Georgia Power leaders for the ribbon-cutting.
Rick Anderson, senior vice president and senior production officer for Georgia Power, said the completed project is "great news for our customers and for reliable energy in our state." He also thanked contractor Crowder Engineering for its work on the facility.
A battery system like Moody's charges up when solar output is high and demand is low, then releases that stored power back to the grid later, such as on cold winter mornings when demand climbs.
Part of a larger statewide build-out
The Moody project was approved alongside three other battery systems, in Bibb, Cherokee and Floyd counties, that together total 715 MW and are nearing completion. Those projects were approved in a 2023 update to Georgia Power's Integrated Resource Plan, the regulatory process the Georgia Public Service Commission uses to approve new generation and storage.
The commission has also approved nine more battery storage facilities across eight sites, adding more than 3,000 MW of additional planned storage. Those sites include Plants Bowen, Hammond, McIntosh, Wansley and Yates, along with stand-alone locations in Hall and McDuffie counties. Separately, regulators approved two new solar-plus-storage systems totaling 350 MW in Laurens and Dougherty counties.
Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company and serves 2.8 million customers across most of Georgia's counties. The utility says the storage additions are meant to help meet the state's growing power needs while adding resiliency to the power grid.
