Southern Company inks 25-year power supply deal for OpenAI's planned Georgia data center

Southern Company (SO) up 1.4% in Wednesday's trading after Georgia Power said it will provide electric service to OpenAI's (OPENAI) planned data center project in Effingham County, Georgia, under a 25-year agreement that includes one of the largest single-site demand response commitments in the U.S.

OpenAI (OPENAI) unveiled plans to spend more than $30B on the project, which is expected to require ~3.2 GW of electricity during 2028-32 as it scales operations.

OpenAI (OPENAI) will pay the full infrastructure and electric service costs to serve its facility and will fulfill requirements for long-term energy contracts and include financial assurances designed to protect Georgia Power customers, Southern (SO) said.

In addition, OpenAI (OPENAI) agreed to provide up to 1,000 MW of flexible demand response, allowing Georgia Power to reduce power delivered to the facility during periods of high demand to help maintain grid reliability.

The project marks OpenAI's (OPENAI) first data center in which it is serving as the lead developer and designer, rather than leasing computing capacity from cloud providers.