NEWNAN, Ga. — Hundreds of construction workers are on the job around the clock building Georgia’s energy future at Plant Yates, where they’re expanding a former 1950s coal power plant into a state-of-the-art natural gas powerhouse. Georgia Power says it’s part of a massive multi-year expansion that will help them meet a surging energy demand as new data centers come online across the state, nearly doubling the power the company could produce. “Yates is setting the stage,” said plant manager Robert Canning. “We’re trying to set equipment, we’re trying to assemble piping, we’re trying to run wires.” Channel 2 Action News’s Michael Doudna went inside the construction site to see the technology driving the development. Inside, construction workers are building emissions capture systems, power transmission infrastructure and carefully engineered support structures around the natural gas turbines at the center of the project. Each of the site’s three massive Mitsubishi turbines weighs over 800,000 pounds and had its assembly finished in Georgia before a multiple day journey to Plant Yates in Coweta County. “It’s probably about 10 times the size of a jet engine,” Canning said. “But
