Your Bill Is Already Moving

Residential electricity prices were flat for years — around 13¢ per kilowatt-hour from 2015 through 2019. Then they started climbing. As of January 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put the U.S. City Average at 19.2¢/kWh, about 48% above the 2019 baseline. The Energy Information Administration reported that residential electricity prices rose 11.5% in 2025 alone, outpacing inflation. For the full 10-year picture — flat then up — see our Electricity Index.

Data centers and AI-related power demand are one of the drivers. They're not the only one: grid investment, fuel costs, and generation mix matter too. But the scale of new demand is unlike anything utilities planned for. Traditional planning assumes 1–2% annual demand growth. Data centers are driving regional growth of 20–30% annually. That mismatch is already showing up in your bill and in rate cases nationwide.

What the Numbers Say: National and Regional

Carnegie Mellon's Open Energy Outlook modeled the impact of data center and cryptocurrency mining growth through 2030. The result: average U.S. electricity generation costs could rise by about 8%, with power sector emissions up roughly 30%. On the ground, that translates into higher bills. Central and Northern Virginia — the country's largest data center corridor — face projected electricity cost increases exceeding 25% by 2030, the highest in the model. ICF's 2025 energy demand report suggests residential electricity prices could increase by up to 40% by 2030 compared to 2025 in some scenarios.

It's already happening in wholesale markets. PJM, the grid operator serving 67 million customers across 13 states, saw capacity market prices explode in December 2024 — from $30 to $270 per megawatt-day, a ninefold rise — and those costs flow through to ratepayers. Sierra Club and PJM modeling put residential bill increases in PJM at around 10% in the near term, with system costs in the region projected to rise by $160 billion from 2025 to 2040 due to data center growth. Unless rate design changes, a lot of that gets spread across residential and small commercial customers.

The Scale of the Buildout — and Who Pays

Utilities have received requests for over 700 gigawatts of power connection development — more than the entire United States consumed in 2023 (~477 GW). Many of those projects will never get built, but the requests are driving planning, new gas and transmission build-out, and rate filings. In the first half of 2025 alone, utilities requested more than $29 billion in rate increases, double the first half of 2024, with electric rate increases expected to affect around 40 million customers. In data-center-heavy states like Virginia, electricity prices have increased up to 267% over the last five years in some areas.

To meet demand, grid operators and utilities are leaning on aging coal plants (more than 25 GW otherwise scheduled for retirement could keep running largely for data centers), building new gas plants (construction costs have tripled since 2022, with lead times stretching to six or seven years for turbines), and upgrading transmission. Those costs are passed through. Regulators in several states are starting to create separate rate classes for large-load customers like data centers so residential users don't shoulder the full burden — but that shift is still in progress.

Electricity Used to Track Inflation. It Doesn't Anymore.

For much of the 2010s, retail electricity prices tracked inflation: EIA data show that in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, prices increased by less than 1% from 2013 to 2023. Since 2019, that's changed. Nominal prices have jumped from about 13¢ to 19¢/kWh, and 2025's 11.5% increase clearly outpaced CPI. So the answer to "are electric utilities following the rate of inflation?" is: they did for a long time; they don't anymore. Data centers are one reason, alongside wires, generation, and fuel. For the decade-long trend in one place, check the Electricity Index.

The Bottom Line

Data centers and AI are contributing to higher electric bills — not in a vague way, but in specific, measurable ways: PJM's capacity spike, Virginia's price spikes, $29 billion in rate requests, and projections of 8% higher national generation costs and 10–25%+ higher bills in some regions by 2030. How much of your particular bill is "data centers" vs. other factors depends on where you live and how your state allocates costs. But the trend is up, and electricity is no longer the stable, inflation-tracking line item it used to be.

Sources: Carnegie Mellon / Open Energy Outlook (data center growth, 8% national cost increase, 25%+ Virginia, PJM capacity spike, 25 GW coal, 350% demand growth to 2030). EESI (700 GW requests, $29B rate requests, 40M customers, Virginia 267%, ICF 40% by 2030, gas build costs tripled, coal refurbishment, arrears and disconnections). Sierra Club (PJM $160B, ~10% residential bills). BLS/FRED APU000072610 (average electricity price). EIA (residential prices, 11.5% 2025, inflation-adjusted trend 2013–2023).