This story was originally published by Grist.

Democrats will hold three of the five seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission beginning in January, giving the party control of the state's powerful utility regulator for the first time in 30 years. The commission oversees utilities including Georgia Power, the state's largest electric provider, and has drawn growing scrutiny in recent years as residents contend with rising power bills and utilities confront the heavy energy demands of data centers.

The incoming Democratic majority plans to focus on affordability, clean energy, and closer oversight of Georgia Power. The commission approves the rates Georgia Power charges customers and weighs the utility's plans for generating and delivering power; majority control, in turn, helps determine which issues get hearings and how deeply utility proposals are examined. Those decisions shape household bills and how the grid expands to meet new demand.

“There's a long laundry list of things that need to be looked into,” said Democratic Commissioner Peter Hubbard, who won his reelection bid this week. “And so we'll have to triage, in fact, and decide how best to move forward.”

Hubbard said one of his first priorities will be launching an affordability docket — a series of hearings examining why power bills are high and how customers can save money. He and his fellow Democrats also plan to closely scrutinize upcoming Georgia Power requests to generate more electricity and adjust customer rates. Shelia Edwards and Alicia Johnson are the other two Democrats on the commission.

Even so, meaningful changes — particularly to power bills — will likely take time.

“We may not be able to expect immediate effects on our wallets,” said Kristin Phillips, an associate professor at Emory University who studies energy burden and the commission. “But I think we can expect immediate change in the types of decisions that are made.”

Affordability and high energy bills were driving issues in both this year's and last year's elections, the two contests that together produced the new Democratic majority.

“We knew that we had to connect the dots between energy and affordability,” said Brionté McCorkle of Georgia Conservation Voters, a group that campaigned for the Democratic candidates and worked to raise the profile of the commission's races. “It's not just this obscure regulatory body like it used to be treated. Its decisions directly affect household budgets, communities, health, and our energy future.”

Chris Womack, chief executive of Southern Company, Georgia Power's parent, likewise acknowledged the central importance of affordability during the company's third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, but expressed confidence that the utility can address those concerns with the new commissioners.

“If you look at what we have been doing with rate freezes, with benefits, with how we are providing benefits from growth to customers — existing customers — as well as to the communities, we think that's a strong platform to stand on,” he said.

Who pays for the infrastructure behind the state's data center buildout — and who checks that the promised benefits are real — frames much of the work ahead for the incoming commission. Since Georgia's data center boom began, Georgia Power has maintained that the added revenue would more than pay for the new infrastructure required to serve those facilities, which the utility argues keeps rates lower for residential and small-business customers. It calls this effect “downward pressure.” The term does not mean rates will fall; rather, any increases would be offset by the influx of data center revenue.

The utility doubled down on that promise as part of its deal to serve a massive new OpenAI data center. Georgia Power said the agreement would bring $15 of downward pressure — not savings — per month for what it calls the “typical” residential customer. Separately, Georgia Power credited data center revenue for the temporary rate freeze approved last year.

That freeze drew criticism from some advocacy groups over its sequencing: rather than first holding a Public Service Commission hearing that would have given advocates a chance to verify the utility's financial claims, Georgia Power announced the temporary rate freeze outright. Advocates say the reversed process left them unable to confirm whether the company was delivering on its promises and fully shielding ordinary customers from data center costs.

The dispute fits into a broader criticism frequently leveled at the commission and Georgia Power: a lack of transparency. The OpenAI contract was redacted in its entirety, with only a summary released to the public after approval. Specific details of service contracts, energy purchase agreements, and construction costs are routinely redacted from the utility's public filings under the auspices of trade secrecy.

“I absolutely think transparency is potentially one of the biggest impacts here,” Phillips said of the election results. “It has been often on advocates to push on the way that the PSC communicates about the decisions that it's making, and I'm hoping that there will be more clarity and transparency.”

The Democratic commissioners have pledged increased scrutiny of the next rate-setting process — the periodically recurring review in which the commission examines Georgia Power's costs and sets the rates customers pay — due in 2028, along with Georgia Power's long-term plans to generate and deliver energy and its forecasts of rising demand. Hubbard has also proposed conducting a rate case for the state's natural gas utilities, which he said has not been done in more than a decade.

“We'll continue with an agenda next year and the year after that to take advantage of this four-year period when we have the majority and can push for long-lasting reforms and shifting the direction of the state in terms of energy,” Hubbard said.

This article originally appeared in Grist at Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.