Data centers use more power. Households absorbed the price rise

Two trends over the same period, 2020 to 2024:

• Residential electricity prices rose 25%
• Data centers and other large commercial users consumed more kilowatts than ever, at prices that rose only slightly — with some industrial users now paying less on average than two years earlier

What that does and does not prove

It does not prove data centers caused your bill to rise. PolitiFact has examined that specific claim and found it unsupported as a full explanation — grid investment, fuel costs and weather all move residential rates.

What it does show is a distribution question: demand grew fastest in a customer class whose rates moved least, while the class whose demand grew slowly absorbed the largest increases.

Why large users pay less per unit

There are real cost reasons. Large customers take power at higher voltage, avoiding distribution costs. They have steadier, more predictable load, which is cheaper to serve than residential peaks.

The argument is not whether those discounts should exist. It is whether current rate designs still reflect actual cost of service when a single facility can draw as much power as a small city, and when the grid upgrades built to serve that load are recovered from every ratepayer.

Where that gets decided

In state rate cases, in the section on cost allocation — how the cost of the system is divided among customer classes. It is technical, it is public, and it decides which class carries the build-out.

That is the proceeding to watch, not the press release.

Questions people ask