- Business
- Southern Company is an energy holding company that, through its subsidiaries, generates, transmits, and distributes electricity; distributes natural gas; develops and operates power generation, battery storage, and microgrid assets; provides energy-related solutions, wholesale power sales, and distributed energy and resilience services; and also holds telecommunications and fiber optics investments. Founded in 1945 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the company serves electric and gas customers across the southeastern and southern United States, with regulated electric operations in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida and natural gas distribution operations in Illinois, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, New Jersey, Florida, and Maryland.
Its principal businesses include Alabama Power, Georgia Power, and Mississippi Power; Southern Company Gas, including Atlanta Gas Light, Nicor Gas, Virginia Natural Gas, and Chattanooga Gas; Southern Power, which owns and manages contracted renewable and conventional generation assets; and Southern Nuclear, which manages the company’s nuclear generation interests, including the Vogtle units in Georgia. The company’s offerings cover retail electric service for residential, commercial, and industrial customers; wholesale electricity sales; natural gas distribution and related services; gas pipeline and storage infrastructure; energy infrastructure development; and selected clean-energy and customer-sited solutions.
Recent major developments include Georgia Power’s 25-year power supply agreement with OpenAI for a new project in Effingham County, Georgia, which was approved by regulators in August 2026 and involves about 3,200 megawatts of new demand, with OpenAI funding the required infrastructure and committing up to 1,000 megawatts of flexible demand response. Southern Company also reported in its 2025 year-end materials that construction was underway on 2.5 gigawatts of new generation in Georgia and Alabama, including natural gas and battery storage, scheduled to come online within two years.
The company operates as a diversified regulated utility and infrastructure group serving residential, commercial, industrial, and wholesale customers, with a business model centered on rate-regulated electric and gas utilities, contracted wholesale generation, and long-term infrastructure expansion to support load growth and system reliability.