Georgia Power and OpenAI are expected to close a deal on Wednesday that will see the monopoly utility provide electricity for a 3.2 gigawatt hyperscale data center planned for Effingham County.
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The deal requires the approval from the staff at the Georgia Public Service Commission, a hurdle Georgia Power nearly tripped over earlier this month.
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.”
As that Aug. 14 deadline approached, PSC staff did have objections. To buy itself time to resolve the issue, Georgia Power pushed the review timeline back by 12 days. The review now ends Wednesday, Aug. 26.
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.
Patty Durand, a critic of the Republican-led PSC who founded the group Georgians for Affordable Energy, points out that the next meeting of the PSC energy committee is Aug. 27, a day after the deadline.
“Why is Georgia Power so concerned with disempowering commissioners by ensuring the contract deadline is reached a day before the next PSC meeting?” she asked in a text to The Current GA.
Commissioner Peter Hubbard said he would prefer to review the deal in more detail.
“The magnitude of this contract, the single contract, it is far larger than what we typically approve in the commission under integrated resource plans when we’re planning out 20 years into the future for load growth, Hubbard said in an interview with The Current GA. “That’s a contested docket with lots of scrutiny, lots of public input. It’s people looking at a good deal of information that they can see under a (nondisclosure agreement). That’s not the case here.”
But the PSC staff did work out additional protections for ratepayers, he said.
“It is a further guarantee from the company that costs won’t be shifted from data centers and other large load customers, in particular, you know these very large ones,” Hubbard said in an interview with The Current. But it will be up to the elected commissioners to enforce the additional protection.
“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.
Two of the five PSC seats, including Hubbard’s, are to be decided in November’s general election. Hubbard and Alicia Johnson flipped two seats to the Democrats last year, parlaying anger over rising electric bills into electoral victory. If the Democrats win two seats in November, the PSC will turn majority Democrat for the first time in three decades.
Commissioner Alicia Johnson, whose district includes the proposed OpenAI data center, did not reply to a request for comment. Nor did former Commissioner Fitz Johnson, who is Hubbard’s Republican opponent in November.
The terms of the contract are considered to be trade secrets. The copy released to the public was fully redacted and will remain secret even after the contract is executed, Hubbard said.
The Tide brings regular notes and observations on news and events by The Current staff.
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