Georgia Power and OpenAI are expected to close a contract Wednesday for electricity serving a 3.2 gigawatt hyperscale data center planned for Effingham County, The Current reports, with the deal's regulatory review ending one day before the Public Service Commission's energy committee next meets.
The timing is the story. Under a rule the commission adopted in April 2025, Georgia Power must file any new data center contract over 100 megawatts with the PSC at least 30 days before execution, and staff may lodge objections to be worked out in good faith. As the original August 14 deadline approached, staff did object, and the utility pushed its own review timeline back by 12 days, moving the end of review to Wednesday, August 26. The committee convenes August 27.
Patty Durand, founder of Georgians for Affordable Energy, asked in a message to the outlet why the utility would arrange for the deadline to land a day before commissioners meet. Commissioner Peter Hubbard, in an interview with The Current, said he would have preferred more detailed review, noting the single contract exceeds what the commission typically approves through integrated resource planning, a process he described as a contested docket with scrutiny and public input that this contract will not receive.
Ratepayer protections did come out of the staff process, per Hubbard: a further guarantee from the company that costs will not shift from very large load customers onto everyone else. His caveat is the part procurement teams should note. "You need both the guarantee and the enforceability of the guarantee, and so what I can say, is that I will certainly hold their feet to the fire if I'm able to at the commission with my vote, but it will require three votes to do that," he said.
Enforcement math leads directly to electoral math. Two of the five PSC seats are on November's ballot, including Hubbard's, and a second Democratic win would give the commission its first Democratic majority in three decades, reshaping how aggressively such guarantees get policed.
Transparency is the other open item. The contract's terms are treated as trade secrets, the publicly released copy was fully redacted, and per Hubbard it will stay secret even after execution. For a 3.2 gigawatt commitment, the public record will show that a deal exists and little else.
Operators watching Georgia should read this as the shape of large-load contracting to come: a 30-day review window, staff-negotiated guarantees of uncertain enforceability, and terms sealed from the market. Competitors negotiating power in other jurisdictions now have one more reason to ask exactly when their utility's review clock ends and who is in the room when it does.
Leave a Reply