Power What OpenAI's Georgia Power Deal Actually Commits To Published 27 July 2026 | Last updated 27 July 2026 OpenAI is contracting with Georgia Power for 3.2 gigawatts to run a data center campus in Effingham County, delivered in phases between 2028 and 2032 under a 25-year agreement. On the question most Georgia residents are asking, whether their own bills pay for it, the written record is clearer than the argument around it: OpenAI has committed to paying the full cost of the infrastructure and electric service required to serve the site. That commitment rests on a rule the Georgia Public Service Commission approved in January 2025, built for exactly this situation. Reading the rule alongside the commitment shows what is genuinely locked down, and what still depends on a document the public has not seen. TL;DR OpenAI states it will pay the full cost of infrastructure and electric service for the site, and that Georgia families will not subsidize it . Georgia's rule for customers above 100 megawatts makes large users pay upstream generation, transmission, and distribution costs, on contracts of 15 years with minimum billing. The rule requires every such contract to be submitted to the Commission for review . The Camellia contract has not been published. OpenAI also commits to up to one gigawatt of demand reduction during peak periods, before residential customers are affected. The wider ratepayer question was decided separately in December 2025, when regulators certified 9,885 megawatts of new generation. Disclosure. This story concerns OpenAI, a competitor to Anthropic. This newsroom uses Anthropic's Claude in production. Does this apply to you? If you are a Georgia Power residential customer, this is the section that matters. The costs of building and serving this specific campus are, by both the company's commitment and the state's rule, assigned to the customer using the power. Nothing in the agreement adds a line to a residential bill. If you live outside Georgia, none of this reaches your bill. Ratepayer effects from data centers are set utility by utility and state by state, which is why the numbers in the PJM grid across 13 states look nothing like Georgia's. What OpenAI actually committed to, in its own words In its 22 July announcement , OpenAI put four commitments in writing. On cost, it states plainly that electricity rates will not go up for residents because of the project, that Georgia families will not subsidize it, and that OpenAI will pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric-service costs required to serve it. The demand-response commitment is the one with an operational consequence. OpenAI says the project will be among the first data centers designed to proactively reduce its power consumption before residential customers are affected during periods of high demand, with up to one gigawatt of flexible demand response. In practice that means the campus throttles first when the grid is strained. The remaining commitments cover closed-loop cooling that recirculates water rather than continuously withdrawing it, $80 million in community benefits over the life of the project, up to $71 million in Codex credits for Georgia college and technical students at $100 each, and an annual publicly available audit by an independent firm. What the Georgia rule actually says OpenAI's announcement says that under Public Service Commission rules, those costs cannot be passed on to existing ratepayers. The rule itself, approved unanimously on 23 January 2025 , is written as an enabling rule rather than a prohibition, and the distinction is worth understanding because it explains where the protection actually lives. The Commission's language is that new customers using more than 100 megawatts can be billed using terms and conditions beyond those used for standard customers. Alongside site-specific costs, those customers pay for costs incurred by upstream generation, transmission, and distribution as construction progresses. Contract lengths run 15 years rather than five, and minimum billing requirements apply, so a large user cannot leave the state before paying for infrastructure built for it. So the rule does not forbid cost-shifting in the abstract. It gives Georgia Power the tools to write contracts that prevent it, and then requires the Commission to check the result. Commission Vice Chairman Tim Echols put the intent directly, saying data centers will need to bear the cost of their electricity acquisition. The document that would settle it has not been published The same January 2025 rule contains a requirement that has gone almost entirely unmentioned in coverage of Camellia: any new Georgia Power contract with a company in the 100 megawatt category must be submitted to the Commission for review. That means the 25-year Camellia agreement is not a private arrangement between two companies. It is a filing the regulator is required to see, and it is the document where the phrase "full cost" acquires an actual definition: which costs, measured how, over what period, with what happens if the load arrives later or smaller than forecast. As of 27 July 2026 that contract has not been made public, and the commitments above rest on the company's characterization of it rather than on its terms. The protections, and what backs each one Protection What backs it Public record? As of Large user pays upstream generation, transmission, distribution PSC rule for customers above 100 MW Yes, rule published 2025-01-23 15-year term plus minimum billing PSC rule Yes, rule published 2025-01-23 OpenAI pays full cost for this site Company commitment, plus the 25-year contract Contract not published 2026-07-27 Up to one gigawatt demand response Company commitment, in the 25-year agreement Terms not published 2026-07-27 Base rates frozen PSC order, runs through 2028 Yes, order published 2025-07-31 The bigger ratepayer question was decided in December, not in July Camellia is one campus. The decision that carries the larger financial consequence for Georgia Power customers came seven months earlier and had nothing to do with OpenAI specifically. On 19 December 2025 , the Commission voted five to nothing to approve a stipulated agreement letting Georgia Power produce 9,885 megawatts of new energy, most of it to serve new large customers such as data centers. The Commission stated that the agreement ensures serving those new customers will not raise rates for current Georgia Power customers. CLAIM Not everyone at the Commission agreed on the scale. In November 2025, Commission staff testimony recommended certifying only 30 to 40 percent of what Georgia Power had requested, warning that much of the projected demand rested on forecasts rather than executed contracts. Georgia Power agreed to financially backstop the costs through 2031 if the anticipated data center contracts do not materialize. CLAIM This is where a contract like Camellia's does real work in the other direction. A 25-year agreement with minimum billing is precisely the kind of executed commitment the Commission's staff said was missing from the forecast. Signed load reduces the risk that generation gets built for demand that never arrives. One date worth marking DERIVED The Commission's base rate freeze runs through 2028. Camellia's power deliveries begin in 2028 and run to 2032. The two figures come from separate documents, and placing them side by side shows the freeze lapsing in the same year the first phase of load arrives. That is not a prediction that rates will rise. Base rates are one component of a bill, the freeze covers a fixed window that was always going to end, and the cost-allocation rule operates independently of it. It is a marker for when the arrangement stops being theoretical and starts being measurable, and the first phase of Camellia is the test case. What is not yet known The 25-year contract terms, including how "full cost" is defined and what happens if load arrives late or under-scale. The Commission's review of that filing. The terms of the demand-response commitment, including who calls it and what enforces it. Reporting on the campus footprint is also inconsistent, with the buildings described as roughly 101 acres inside the 2,600-acre Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub in some accounts and the campus put at about 1,400 acres in others. The independent annual audit OpenAI committed to is the mechanism that would make these figures checkable over time. Its scope, auditor, and first publication date have not been announced. For context on the questions that audit would need to answer, see this publication's work on how data center water use is measured and on federal scrutiny of large-load connection rules . Utility rules, tariffs, and project terms change. Verify current status with the Georgia Public Service Commission before relying on any figure here. Figures labeled CLAIM are operator-stated or agency-stated and not independently audited. Figures labeled DERIVED are calculated here from figures stated by the sources. Sources OpenAI, "Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community" , 22 July 2026. Georgia Public Service Commission, "PSC Approves Rule to Allow New Power Usage Terms for Data Centers" , 23 January 2025. Georgia Public Service Commission, "Commissioners Approve Agreement for New Generation" , 19 December 2025. Georgia Public Service Commission, Data Center Fact Sheet , March 2026 (base rate freeze through 2028). OpenAI, Project Camellia project site , retrieved 27 July 2026. Published 27 July 2026 | Last updated 27 July 2026