OpenAI said Monday it will use less electricity at a new data center campus when the power grid is strained. The Sam Altman-run company plans to turn down power during extreme weather or emergencies at its planned data center site in Effingham County, Georgia, where locals protested the $30 billion project over the summer. The campus outside Savannah will need an estimated 3.2 gigawatts of power and is expected to launch in 2028. Under its “Grid Protectors Program,” OpenAI will cut up to 1 gigawatt — enough to power about 700,000 homes — to help stabilize the local grid as needed. OpenAI said its ambition is to make this flexibility a core part of how it builds and operates future campuses, including designing facilities to reduce electricity use when needed and working with utilities on how much demand can be reduced, how quickly and for how long. It also said it would work with grid operators to supply power from on-site generation or storage and use batteries and power controls to smooth changes in demand. Georgia Power’s Aaron Mitchell said the utility appreciated the leadership and thoughtfulness of the OpenAI team. Effingham County is the only data center campus OpenAI has planned to launch on its own to date; it runs 28 data center facilities nationwide, according to Baxtel, and is working on a campus with Oracle in Wisconsin.