Project dossier · Rincon (Effingham County), Georgia

Project Camellia (OpenAI Effingham County) In review

$20B OpenAI campus on 1,400 acres of the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, with 3.2 GW contracted from Georgia Power. The incentive deal was signed the day before the public learned of it.

Key facts

Operator
OpenAI
Owner
OpenAI
Tenant
OpenAI
Filing LLC
Octans GA, LLC
Size
3,200 MW
Acres
1,400
Location
Rincon (Effingham County), Georgia
First proposed
2026-07-22
Stage today
In review

Source
read 2026-08-23

What to do next

Next step: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.

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What has happened so far (5 events)

  • 2026-02-02filing
    An OpenAI infrastructure official circulated a mutual non-disclosure agreement to Effingham County officials, asking them to sign before receiving confidential briefings on the project — the start of negotiations conducted outside public view. · source
  • 2026-07-21incentive
    The Effingham County Industrial Development Authority signed a memorandum of understanding with Octans GA, LLC, an OpenAI affiliate, granting a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years locked to the 2026 millage rate. · source
  • 2026-07-22announcement
    County leaders publicly announced the $20 billion, 1,400-acre campus one day after the tax agreement was signed, projecting up to 1,000 permanent jobs, an $80 million community investment fund, and revenue that could underwrite the county's plan to eliminate homestead property taxes. · source
  • 2026-07-24utility
    Reporting confirmed OpenAI had contracted 3.2 gigawatts from Georgia Power for the site, delivered over roughly four years, despite public backlash over the secrecy of the deal. · source
  • 2026-08-08coverage
    An open-records investigation reconstructed how the deal moved from NDA to signed abatement without a public hearing, with residents learning the buyer's identity only after the incentives were locked in. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

  • No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
  • Georgia Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
  • FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
  • Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 32.290, -81.240 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Georgia

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Project Camellia (OpenAI Effingham County)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/openai-project-camellia-effingham-ga, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

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