With a deadline a day away and staff at the Public Service Commission prepared to raise objections to its contract terms with data center operator OpenAI, Georgia Power on Thursday bought itself more time to negotiate.
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“The company has agreed that the filing date of the contract for the purposes of a 30-day review cycle will be July 27, 2026 to allow Staff additional time to consider the contract,” Brandon Marzo, an attorney representing Georgia Power wrote to the PSC in a letter dated Aug. 13.
The move pushes the staff review period deadline from Aug. 14 to Aug. 26 giving Georgia Power time to provide staff with additional information, PSC spokesman Tom Krause explained in a media advisory.
OpenAI, the company behind artificial intelligence giant ChatGPT, is developing the $20 billion Effingham County data center campus that’s projected to launch in 2028. Georgia Power will provide the data center with 3.2 gigawatts of energy — enough to power Atlanta three times over — to be delivered in phases from 2028 to 2032.
Under a rule the commission passed in April 2025 Georgia Power must provide the PSC all new contracts with data centers over 100 megawatts at least 30 days before execution. Last year’s rule states that the PSC staff can file objections to a contract and “the company and commission staff will work together in good faith to resolve any such objections.”
At a public meeting of the PSC Thursday, Tom Bond, the agency’s director of utilities, said the staff was finished with its review.
“Right now, unless the company agrees to certain changes, staff would file an objection,” he told Commissioner Peter Hubbard, who asked if staff planned to file any objections.
Under commission rules, if staff files an objection, the contract shall be approved if the commission takes no action within 30 days after the staff’s filing.
The terms of the contract are considered to be trade secrets. The copy released to the public was fully redacted.
At the PSC meeting, on Thursday morning before the deadline was extended, Hubbard argued for a more active role for the five-member elected commission.
“I’m not comfortable with just allowing staff to review this on their own,” said Hubbard, one of two Democrats elected to the PSC last fall as part of a public backlash against rising electricity prices. “I think that we, as a commission, should take a position on this, and so I’ve asked that staff object to the contract that is in front of us until we have sufficient financial guardrails in place.”
The other Democrat on the majority Republican five-person board, Alicia Johnson, reiterated Hubbard’s stance.
“I will say that any customer who is requiring this amount of energy should expect an equal amount of rigor and scrutiny,” she said. Johnson doesn’t want the decision to be staff’s alone. “We too, as regulators, have to understand all aspects of what’s before us.”
Public commenters at the PSC Thursday made appeals for more transparency in the process and greater accountability from elected officials.
Jeff Beauvais, the north coast advocate for One Hundred Miles, called for a review period of at least 60 days and for giving the staff and commissioners the ability to consider even longer timelines for large or complex projects like the OpenAI data center. He also wants to see more rigorous requirements for utility providers to claim trade secrets.
“The validity of completely redacting the public disclosure document for this project strains credulity when the location, projected peak power demand, and many other aspects of it are already public knowledge,” he said. “… (T)he complete lack of any public information about the content of this contract is deeply troubling.”
Mark Woodall, the legislative chair of the Sierra Club in Georgia, called Georgia Power’s continued use of coal and addition of natural gas-fired plants to power data centers an “environmental disaster.”
“Now we have to consider the economic disaster for the ratepayers,” he said.
He, too, called for greater transparency.
“I mean, I read the 100-page contract here between OpenAI and Georgia Power. It didn’t take about five seconds, because it just says ‘redacted in its entirety.” I don’t think the people of Georgia are going to trust that.”
Speaking with The Current after Georgia Power filed its letter, Hubbard said the additional time seemed insufficient.
“I don’t know if that’s enough time to go through the changes I’d like to see,” he said. “There are some protections but they should be greater. It’s a big, risky bet.”
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