As electric bills increase, states are under pressure to protect regular household and business ratepayers. The actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is hard to pin down, but rising power bills are something legislators have been hearing a lot about. More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I’ve ever seen before,” said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. “There’s a massive outcry.”
The concern is in part because some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh or New Orleans, and require more generation, transmission, and distribution systems to be built. This is pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use.
The problem of rising power costs is a complex one- as data centers increase, the costs for power lines, utility poles, transformers, and more are also increasing; with supply chains still recovering from the pandemic and yet to return to previous costs and availability.
Some states are taking action though, in Oregon, lawmakers passed legislation in June ordering state utility regulators to develop new — presumably higher — power rates for data centers. Other states include New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
Read more here: As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act