Powerstack: OpenAI's PUC-sized problem

Mark’s on vacation this week, and I, Elta Koliou, Currence’s principal of grids and utilities, am subbing in. Georgia’s on my mind, or at least Georgia Power, the Georgia PSC, and OpenAI. A plug-and-play political playbook (affordability-messaging, election-driven rulings, local moratoria) is popping up everywhere a data center looks to break ground. Georgia’s a preview of what's coming to a ballot near you in November. 

And a big update for Currence clients: We’re launching the Currence API today! You can now pull our data directly into your own systems, so the agents and models your team is building can call companies, projects, contracts, and signals straight from our analyst-validated database. Schedule a call with our team to learn more here.

This is Currence’s weekly newsletter on the moves and motives shaping the load growth era. Not a client yet?

What happened

This week, Georgia utility regulators raised concerns about Georgia Power's proposed 25-year power contract for an OpenAI data center campus. The utility had made a deal to supply Project Camellia, OpenAI's $20bn, 3.2GW data center campus outside of Savannah, with electricity delivered in phases from 2028 to 2032. Under the contract, OpenAI agreed to pay full infrastructure costs and committed to up to 1GW of demand response to cut its power draw by roughly a third during periods of peak grid stress.

But the Georgia Public Service Commission staff flagged two things: that the contract didn’t adequately protect ratepayers if OpenAI exits early, and that the public version of the contract was redacted in its entirety. The PSC had put in place data center contracting rules in January 2025 that were supposed to provide protection, requiring longer terms and financial guarantees in contracts for customers with 100MW+ of load. OpenAI’s load meets that 32 times over. Georgia Power filed an extension to revise the proposal, and PSC staff now has until August 26 to decide whether to formally object.

As data centers become bigger political issues, state utility regulators like the PSC become more important. They approve or reject rate increases, sign off on new power plants, decide who pays for grid upgrades, and ultimately how much your bills end up. The Georgia Public Service Commission is one of 10 state utility regulators in the country where voters elect commissioners directly. (In most states, the governor appoints them.) This year, nine of the 10 elected states have seats on the ballot. 

Last November, Georgia voters voted two Republican PSC incumbents out, by 25 percentage points, a flip for 22 counties that went for Trump. New PSC Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard won on the affordability message. Georgia Power had secured six rate hikes in three years; bills rose an average of $43 per month.

But 13 days before Johnson and Hubbard took their seats, the commissioners, including the two lame-duck incumbents, approved Georgia Power's 10GW grid expansion, estimated to cost $50–60bn with roughly 80% of the new load earmarked for data centers. When the new commissioners moved to reconsider it, the 3-2 Republican majority voted them down.

This November, two PSC seats are on the ballot, so it’s a toss-up if the PSC will go Democrat or Republican. Meanwhile, across Georgia, more than 20 counties and municipalities have enacted their own data center moratoria or restrictions, after two statewide moratorium bills failed in the legislature. Counties have been acting on their own. The November PSC election is the closest thing Georgia has to a statewide vote on the question. And it’s not just Georgia, countrywide, data centers are on the ballot.

Elta's take

Mark’s at the beach this week 🏖️ so I’m giving my hot takes in this edition. And here’s what I’ll say. Affordability is real. Bills are rising, customers are feeling it, and we need to build the next era of the power system without sticking consumers with the open tab.

But the affordability debate has become a bit of a kitchen sink.

Rates are up? Data centers. Gas prices are up? Data centers. Grid investment is up? You guessed it: data centers.

Yes, data centers are driving load growth, and they should pay their fair share. But the grid was old before ChatGPT showed up. ASCE says 70% of power transformers are 25+ years old, 60% of circuit breakers are 30+ years old, and 70% of transmission lines are 25+ years old. Meanwhile, we're asking that aging system to handle electrification, extreme weather, two-way power flows, and a lot more load.

That costs money.

And here's where the politics can make the economics worse.

Threatening ROE bills from governors (👀 Pennsylvania) looking to run for president are not helpful. We can't rate-freeze our way out of this. Squeeze utility cash flows and returns too far, credit ratings can fall. Lower credit ratings mean more expensive capital. More expensive capital means more expensive infrastructure. And guess who eventually pays for that?

👋 Hi, customer.

Kicking investment down the road doesn't make it cheaper. It can make it more expensive.

Nor are we going to wish load growth away. You're not going to stop scrolling cat videos. You're probably not giving up ChatGPT. And that social media post complaining about data centers? It required compute running inside...a data center.

So, my hottest take: Embrace the change. Then make it affordable.

Make large loads pay their fair share. Large-load tariffs aren't perfect, but they're a start. Keep iterating. Get the cost allocation right. Use flexibility to squeeze more capacity from the grid we already have. Build generation, transmission, and distribution where we need it. Invest in the technology that lets us operate all of it better: software, hardware, sensors, and a new grid. Protect consumers.

Affordability is the problem to solve. Avoiding investment isn't the solution.

A quick read on the numbers shaping the market. The capex, the contracts, the regs, all anchored in the so-what.

35GW // Mitsubishi Power's large-frame gas turbine backlog, up from 23GW a year ago on 10 new orders this quarter. Mitsubishi is doubling manufacturing capacity to keep up. GE Vernova sits at 116GW, Siemens Energy at 69GW, so every major OEM is now sold out years into the future, as developers try to lock in gas capacity. 

$1bn // DOE's new funding for X-Energy-Dow's Seadrift advanced nuclear project that brings the total to $2.15bn. It will fund four Xe-100 reactors (320MW) under 50/50 cost-share terms to power Dow's industrial site directly. Washington is picking winners in advanced nuclear as it aims to accelerate the sector. 

10GW // new generation at SB Energy-OpenAI's Ohio data center. They two announced a 20-year lease at a former uranium enrichment site in Ohio, with Nvidia guaranteeing up to $105bn in conditional lease and power obligations and investing $1.5bn in SB Energy directly. And Nvidia is now supplier, guarantor, and equity investor in the same deal, raising bubble fears, which Jensen Huang went on X to deny.

+300% // Battery storage projects waiting to connect to ConEd's grid. The queue has tripled in two years, as grid upgrade delays stall BESS interconnection nationwide. Falling battery prices pulled more projects into the queue, but the equipment needed to handle bidirectional power flows -- transformers, circuit breakers, substations -- is backordered.

Explore more Signals on Currence here.

The policies, rulings, and company moves worth watching.

FERC's statistical sampling ruling in PJM. The commission ordered PJM to accept statistical sampling for demand response and VPP measurement, removing the data-access barrier VPP aggregators have cited for years to explain PJM's lag on DR participation.

Pennsylvania Governor pushing the PUC to standardize DER policy statewide. Shapiro directed his administration to pursue PUC measures requiring uniform data sharing across electric distribution companies (EDCs) — a minimum set of fields all EDCs must share with DER aggregators — and standardized EDC review for DER aggregations. It could create a single in-state model for aggregators instead of the 50+ utility-by-utility approaches across PJM.

Vantage Data Centers exploring an IPO or sale at a $100bn valuation. Silver Lake- and DigitalBridge-backed Vantage is weighing a listing, which would be the largest data center IPO ever attempted, or outright sale. With Stargate-contracted AI infra on the books [see last week’s Powerstack], and Brookfield's Csquare pricing below range last month, it could be a test of whether public markets will price hyperscaler-contracted AI infra at what private markets say it's worth.

KKR's $9bn unsolicited bid for UGI Corp. At $42.50/share, it’s a 21% premium on the Pennsylvania gas and electric distributor's regulated utility, pipeline, and AmeriGas propane assets. Regulated gas distribution is getting priced as a strategic AI-era asset, and PE is paying utility multiples to own it. 

The latest research, features, and data drops on the Currence platform.

Read The LDES x Data Center Opportunity. Our LDES analyst’s take on how the tech can bring speed to power for data centers, and offtake for non-lithium LDES, tracking the projects and contracts driving the trend. 

We’re launching the Currence API today. You can now pull our data directly into your own systems, so the agents and models your team is building can call companies, projects, contracts, and signals straight from our analyst-validated database. Schedule a call with our team to learn more here.

Where the market is meeting, and where to find us

📅 Future Currence // New York, 21 September // Currence’s flagship New York Climate Week event brings the leading utilities, hyperscalers, developers, financiers, and innovators into one room to build a vision for how the AI buildout can create a better grid future. Attendance subject to approval.

📅 Currence Geothermal Breakfast // Houston, 22 September // We're hosting a breakfast September 22nd during Geothermal Rising's 2026 conference to dive into the state of commercialization of advanced geothermal. Register here.

📅 Yotta 2026 // Las Vegas, 28-30 September // Network and learn at the biggest AI infrastructure conference of the year. With 6,000+ leaders across data centers, energy, compute, and capital, the conference is bringing industry leaders together to solve the cross-stack challenge of sustainable, scalable growth in the age of AI. Use code CURRENCE20 for 20% off passes

Interested in diving deeper? Talk to our team and learn how the teams that finance and build the energy system use Currence to stay ahead in the energy and AI buildout, including Southern Company, Tokyo Gas, Jefferies, Galvanize, B Capital, and others.