Georgia Regulators Approve 3.2GW Power Deal for OpenAI's Effingham County Campus

Georgia’s Public Service Commission approved a 25-year contract on August 26, 2026 letting Georgia Power supply up to 3,200MW (3.2GW) of electricity to an OpenAI data center project in Effingham County, near Savannah. OpenAI will pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric service built to serve the site, and has committed to making up to 1,000MW of that demand flexible — letting Georgia Power curtail deliveries during peak statewide demand.

What was approved, and by whom

Georgia Power filed the contract with the PSC in July 2026; the commission signed off on August 26. The utility describes the flexible-demand commitment as “among the largest single-facility demand response agreements in the country” — a structural feature that matters more than it sounds. Large-load contracts of this kind increasingly bundle in curtailment rights precisely because regulators and utilities have grown wary of AI campuses locking in firm capacity that strains the grid during heat waves or cold snaps. OpenAI’s 1,000MW of flexibility is roughly a third of its total draw.

Georgia Power frames the deal as part of a broader portfolio of large-load contracts — this is not its first hyperscale customer, and Effingham County joins a growing list of Georgia counties hosting gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure. The company says the OpenAI contract alone is expected to generate approximately $950 million in annual systemwide savings starting in 2029, with cumulative savings of roughly $2.85 billion over 2029–2031. For a typical residential customer using 1,000kWh a month, that translates to about $180 a year — up from the $102 figure Georgia Power had projected as recently as December 2025, according to CEO Kim Greene.

None of the coverage we reviewed — Georgia Power’s own release, Yahoo Finance, or power-technology.com — disclosed OpenAI’s total capital investment or the campus’s physical footprint (building count, square footage). Where a figure is missing from the primary source, we are leaving it out rather than repeating an unconfirmed number.

What this means for buyers of power

The structure here is becoming the template for gigawatt-scale AI campuses in the US: the hyperscaler funds its own dedicated infrastructure and accepts curtailment obligations, in exchange for the utility fast-tracking approval and (implicitly) insulating the deal from the kind of political backlash now stalling projects elsewhere — Bloomberg reported this week that investment firm Kimmeridge estimates up to half of planned US data centers could face delays over exactly this kind of ratepayer and grid-strain pushback. A “customer pays full freight, customer accepts curtailment” contract is one of the few structures that has cleared a state PSC without controversy so far in 2026.

For buyers shopping capacity rather than building their own campus, the read-through is about where the marginal MW is going. Georgia — like Effingham County’s Savannah-area neighbors — is absorbing hyperscale load that would otherwise compete for space in saturated hubs. Our colocation index shows Northern Virginia wholesale rates at roughly $215/kW/month, up 19% year-on-year, as the classic hub runs out of headroom; a 3.2GW dedicated-infrastructure deal in a secondary Georgia county is effectively new supply that never touches the multi-tenant market at all, which is one reason vacancy in established hubs keeps tightening rather than easing even as gigawatt announcements pile up. Track Georgia’s broader data center footprint on our Georgia state page and colocation pricing trends on /index/.

What we don’t know yet

OpenAI’s total investment figure and the campus’s physical scope were not part of the confirmed record as of this writing — we will update if Georgia Power or OpenAI discloses them. It is also unclear how the 1,000MW flexible-demand mechanism will be tested in practice: whether curtailment during a real peak event materially affects OpenAI’s training or inference schedules, or whether the campus is architected (with onsite generation or storage) to absorb curtailment without disruption. Georgia Power’s own release does not specify a delivery start date for the 3.2GW, beyond the 2029 date attached to the customer-savings projection.