Georgia PSC Approves Secret OpenAI Contract

Georgia Power has a deal with OpenAI to supply electricity to a huge new data center planned for Effingham County, big enough to power a small city. Staff at the Georgia Public Service Commission, the body that regulates utility rates in the state, signed off on the contract without a full vote by the commissioners themselves. That approval came after public pressure over how secretive the process had been.

Two advocacy groups, the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, say the deal still leaves important questions unanswered. Chief among them: how Georgia Power is calculating the cost of serving this data center, and what happens to that cost if the data center later uses less power than expected, or leaves altogether. If Georgia Power can't find another customer to make up that difference, other electric customers could end up covering the gap.

This matters to homeowners because deals like this shape how utilities set electric rates. Big new industrial customers, including data centers built to run artificial intelligence systems, are increasingly common across the country, and how their costs get divided up affects everyone else's bill. Georgia Power's customers won't see an immediate change from this news, but the groups involved say they want the full commission, not just staff, to review and vote on contracts like this one going forward, arguing that more oversight would give ratepayers better protection.