Two Southern Company projects recently earned national recognition, reflecting Southern Company’s commitment to innovation, collaboration and superior performance in meeting the evolving needs of customers and the grid. In its 2025 Top Innovators awards, Public Utilities Fortnightly recognized groundbreaking work by Southern Company teams in hydrogen blending and concrete thermal energy storage.
“These awards recognize Southern Company’s shared commitment to getting better every day in how we meet customers’ evolving energy needs – from everyday innovation to transformational technologies,” said Southern Company Chief Operating Officer Stan Connally.
“These individuals and teammates across our system are leading the way for the future of energy. They embody how we keep customers’ needs at the center of everything we do,” he said in a keynote address at the Fortnightly Top Innovators 2025 conference this month in Washington.
Pioneering hydrogen innovation
Georgia Power’s team at Plant McDonough-Atkinson, along with teammates from Southern Company’s Operations business unit received the Bertha Lamme Top Innovator in Power Generation award for successfully demonstrating a 50% hydrogen blend on an advanced-class gas turbine – a global first and the largest test of its kind to date.
The project, conducted in partnership with Mitsubishi Power, EPRI and Certarus, achieved up to a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions while maintaining reliability and safety. The turbine was converted from steam-cooled to air-cooled, enabling faster startups, expanded turndown capability and reduced maintenance costs.
“This was a world-first,” said Drew Uptain, Plant McDonough engineering team leader and project manager. “We scoped, planned and executed a complex conversion and demonstration in just 15 months – all while continuing to serve our customers without interruption.”
Revolutionizing energy storage
Southern Company’s research and development team, with teammates from Alabama Power’s Plant Gaston and Southern Company Operations, earned the Mabel MacFerran Top Innovator in Energy Storage award for leading the world’s largest pilot of a concrete thermal energy storage system. The 10-megawatt-hour system, developed with Storworks Power and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and EPRI, stores excess heat in modular concrete blocks and releases it as superheated steam when needed – offering a scalable, cost-effective alternative to conventional batteries.
“This project advances the technology closer to commercial readiness and gives us a new way to manage energy more efficiently,” said Josh Barron, senior research engineer for Southern Company. “The technology’s modular design and use of existing infrastructure could help lower costs and improve reliability for customers, while giving us greater flexibility to meet changing customer demand.”
The Fortnightly Top Innovator Awards honored 24 innovators or teams from 20 utilities nationwide. In all, 110 utility employees are being recognized in the October and November issues of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
