What is it costing you?
Pick your state. We combine your state's actual residential electricity price change (EIA, June 2025 → June 2026) with what a typical home there uses each month.
Where bills jumped the most
Estimated change in the monthly bill of a typical home, June 2025 → June 2026. A dot marks major data center hubs. Notice the cluster: half of the ten biggest increases are in or beside the PJM grid region — the 13-state territory where data center demand collided with a record capacity auction — and two of the rest, Idaho and Washington, host hyperscale campuses.
Hawaii tops the list, but honesty matters here: its spike is imported-oil prices, not data centers. The pattern to watch is everything below it — Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York. That's the data center belt. Illinois, D.C., and New Jersey led this chart in May 2026 and fell back in June, which is why we refresh monthly instead of freezing one number.
You don't share a meter with a data center. You share a grid.
The costs reach you through three routes — all legal, all mostly invisible:
The stuff that doesn't show up on a bill
Our focus is your wallet — but if a data center is proposed near you, these are the other things neighbors consistently raise. Worth knowing before the zoning hearing, not after.
Want to know what's proposed near you? Check the crowdsourced Brockovich data center map or the community data center tracker.
How we did the math — and what it doesn't prove
The formula: (your state's average residential price in June 2026 − June 2025, in ¢/kWh) × your state's average monthly household consumption. Prices are from EIA Form 861M Table 5.6.A (preliminary); consumption is from EIA's 2024 annual survey. It's an estimate for a typical home — your usage, plan, and utility will differ.
What it doesn't prove: a price increase isn't automatically a data center story. Hawaii and Alaska track fuel oil. Connecticut's drop was a billing restructure. California is mostly wildfire costs. What is well-documented: in the PJM region and around major hubs, data center demand is a named driver in capacity auctions, rate cases, and utility forecasts — and that's exactly where the biggest increases cluster. We label the difference state by state instead of pretending it's all one cause.
Electricity is one line. See where the rest of your paycheck goes.
Cost of Living Reality Check →- US Energy Information Administration — Form EIA-861M, Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A: average residential price by state, June 2026 vs June 2025 (preliminary, released August 2026)
- US Energy Information Administration — Form EIA-861, 2024 Average Monthly Bill (Residential): average monthly consumption by state
- Erin Brockovich Data Center Reporting map — ~4,000 tracked US data center sites (operating, under construction, or proposed), 2026
- CNN Business / PJM Interconnection — record capacity auction impact on household bills, 2025–2026
- Consumer Reports — "AI Data Centers: Big Tech's Impact on Electric Bills, Water, and More," 2026 (78% concern survey)
- CNBC / Goldman Sachs — data centers to ~12% of US electricity by 2028
- PUCO — AEP Ohio data center tariff settlement, 2025; state/local reporting on noise, water, and air impacts (Loudoun Co. VA, Chandler AZ, Memphis TN)