No worries, voters are engaged so I am not concerned. Data centers are a third rail in politics at the moment. I encourage politicians and lobbyists to voice their support so we know who they are, as elections have consequences.
‘Cost Me the Election’: Data Centers Trigger Voter Backlash - https://www.newsweek.com/cost-me-the-election-data-centers-t... - June 25th, 2026
Utah Senate President Loses Primary After Data Center Backlash - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/us/j-stuart-adams-utah-se... | https://archive.ph/MMot6 - June 24th, 2026
Where Republicans and Democrats stand on AI data centers - https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/where-republicans-and-democrats-... - June 12th, 2026
Americans Oppose AI Data Centers in Their Area - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48183512 - May 2026
Why would anyone be worried? I was asking for actual science behind your claims. If you cannot it’s ok, just cements my thinking similar to the water claims people like to make. It’s the modern hysteria.
My mental model of HN is there is a subset of forum participants who either don't believe the impact data centers are causing, or simply don't care. I’m not here to change hearts or minds (mental models are rigid, humans are emotion vs data driven); only to share data, and consume data.
I believe the data shows data centers to have an outsized impact on the costs discussed. Others may disagree, but the facts are the facts, especially if we're asking schools to conserve power while serving data center loads (per this post and related thread). That is not a fact in support of "data center power consumption is not of material concern, and does not require potential regulatory intervention." Quote the opposite (again, imho). If data centers do not have enough power, the solution is simple; force them to load shed and operate dynamically based on the remaining power available to them until more power is brought online.
Again, show one critical research paper that draws a solid link towards data centers and price increases. You linked to so many articles, many of which just spoke on demand increases. I absolutely believe that in some grids, data centers have driven some of the increase but you claiming that data centers are the only problem reads like those folks scared of solar farms being built.
Just because you want to believe it does not make it true. You are claiming it’s 100% the reason and I am suggesting it’s probably part of it but unclear if it’s 5% or 90%.
So far, the data are clear--data centers are not increasing electricity rates. Those are the facts. https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/the-numb... This may change in the future, but so far, there is no statistically significant correlation.
Not only that, but states with increasing electricity consumption have lower rates. So it's possible data center will lead to lower rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research
> IER is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election. The Institute's CEO and founder, Robert L. Bradley Jr., is a senior fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and Energy & Climate Change Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. He has written eight books, including Energy: The Master Resource; Climate Alarmism Reconsidered; and Edison to Enron.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/institute-for-energy-research...
> Overall, we rate the Institute for Energy Research as Right Biased due to its strong advocacy for fossil fuel expansion and deregulation, aligning with free-market conservative energy policies. We rate its reporting as Mixed for factual accuracy, as it does not always align with the consensus of science by selectively presenting data that favors fossil fuels while downplaying or omitting information on climate change and renewable energy viability. IER is a nonprofit organization that does not fully disclose its funding sources. However, past reports indicate financial ties to fossil fuel interests, including donations from ExxonMobil and groups associated with Charles Koch—a key funder of climate-skeptical and free-market advocacy. While the institute claims to support “energy freedom,” its funding sources suggest a strong alignment with the fossil fuel industry.
(I've forwarded your IER citation to a data science practitioner in the energy space to decompose, more to come)
Brookings: Confronting and addressing rising energy bills linked to data centers - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/confronting-and-addressin... - March 13th, 2026
Data Center Power Demands Are Contributing to Higher Energy Bills - https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-center-power-demands... - February 26th, 2026 ("As data centers expand nationwide, utilities are receiving hundreds of gigawatts in interconnection requests, with implications for the power grid and consumers. Dozens of utilities received data center requests for at least 700 gigawatts (GW) of power connection development in 2025, which is more than the 477 GW in electricity that the United States consumed in all of 2023. Even though many of these projects will never be built, the requests are still leading to a ramp-up in energy infrastructure investments, including generation facilities, transmission lines, and transformers.")
No more PJM data centers unless they can be reliably served: market monitor - https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-data-center-interconnec... - November 26th, 2025 ("The PJM Interconnection’s market monitor urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rule that large data centers can only come online if the grid operator can still meet reliability metrics.")
FERC Complaint: https://elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/filelist?accession_number... ("20251125-5275_2025-11-25 IMM Complaint re Data Center Loads-AS FILED-1.pdf")
Brannon, Ike and Wolf, Samuel, The Impact of Data Centers on Energy Demand and Market Prices (November 11, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5017484 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5017484
> The number of data centers in the U.S. has increased sharply in the last decade and nearly all forecasts suggest that their growth will accelerate in the next decade, mainly driven by the rapid adoption of AI. Since data centers are extremely energy intensive, they have led to significant increases in energy consumption. After two decades of relatively static demand, demand for energy in the U.S. is accelerating rapidly, and demand growth is driven in large part by data centers.
> Data centers have had a particularly strong impact on Northern Virginia: More than half of all the nation's energy consumption attributed to data centers occurs in the state-mostly in Northern Virginia, where the needs of the federal government and national security agencies are important drivers of demand.
> Capacity market prices in the last auction nearly doubled across the PJM region and by more than 14 times in Virginia, signaling an urgent need to secure new transmission and generation to ensure reliability for consumers. Billions of dollars of new investment in generation and transmission capacity will be needed to restore a healthy reserve margin and to recover the portion of reserve capacity that has been consumed by data centers.
> We estimate that failing to make such investments in a timely manner would force regulators to acquiesce to rate increases of as much as 70 percent in the next decade in order to ensure that the grid functions properly and provides energy to all users. The consequences of such a failure could be the appearance of regular brownouts and blackouts in Northern Virginia and across the country.
(If you want to talk to someone at Brookings, FERC, UtilityDive, or another domain specific firm to confirm, let me know and I will connect you to them)
Those read more like policy pieces. Correlations but not strong causation.
Brookings misses out on of the key failures in PJM which is how those terrible 3 year forecasts are causing issues with rates.
Again interesting from a policy perspective but they don’t reach your claim of data centers being the entire problem for retail energy rates.
Please tell me the mental model you have that you believe you can plug a 1GW load into an existing power network and not increase prices?
Do you think that distribution infrastructure required would be free? Do you think markets respond to new demand with new supply instantly?
The market incentive to increase generation is higher prices.
Data center investments, in terms of the energy they will require, far outstrip generation planning and buildout, and by a huge margin.
When you have a demand/supply equilibrium, and you drastically increase demand, what happens to the price?
I am not suggesting that data centers or any load growth for that matter have no impact on prices but rather challenging the idea than data centers are the primary/only reason certain regions have had price increases. Most of the shared links focus on PJM which imo has a flawed auction model that requires 3 year forecasts that nobody would expect to get correct. But it makes for sensational journalism because you can show pictures of data centers up against homes.
I have yet to see any strong research showing a correlation to data center growth and price increases. If you have any beyond a gut feeling I would love to read!