The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved a power supply contract between Georgia Power and OpenAI to serve OpenAI’s planned data center in Effingham County, Georgia.

As part of the deal, the utility will develop 3.2GW of new generation, with OpenAI committing to paying the full cost of the infrastructure required to serve the data center. What type of generating capacity will be used has not been disclosed.

In addition, OpenAI said it will provide up to 1GW of flexible demand response. Georgia Power is expected to begin delivering the energy between 2028 and 2032.

"Data centers are paying more so families and small businesses can pay less, and our goal with every contract we sign under this framework is to deliver value for them," said Kim Greene, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power. "Our customers depend on us for reliable and affordable energy every day, and that is the focus behind every decision we make."

News of the OpenAI data center was first revealed in July. Dubbed Project Camelia, the data center will be located within the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, a 2,600+ acre area zoned for industrial use cases.

The campus is expected to span four data center buildings with a total footprint of 4.4 million sq ft (408,775 sqm). OpenAI is expected to invest more than $30 billion to develop the facility. OpenAI has said that the site will also use a closed-loop water system for cooling and will not divert water from local communities.

Effingham County is located in southeastern Georgia, near Savannah. The county is not currently home to any data centers, as per DataCenterMap, with most of the state's data centers focused in Atlanta and Augusta.

OpenAI has several data center projects across the US, many with partners such as Oracle, Crusoe, and Related Digital. The flagship Stargate site is already operating in Abilene, Texas, with others under development in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Texas.