Have your electricity bills gone up precipitously? It’s becoming a problem all over the country:
Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year. That’s especially painful during the dog days of summer, when air conditioners are working overtime.
In Pembroke Pines, Fla., Al Salvi’s power bill can reach $500 a month.
“There’s a lot of seniors down here that are living check to check. They can barely afford prescriptions such as myself,” says Salvi, who’s 63 and uses a wheelchair. “Now we got to decide whether we’re going to pay the electric bill or are we going to buy medication. And it’s not fair to us. You’re squeezing us between a rock and a hard place.”
Al Salvi moved to Florida from New Jersey about a decade ago, hoping to stretch his disability benefits further. But rising electricity bills and other expenses have forced him to make tough choices about his family budget.
Why is this happening?
Power-hungry AI data centers are one factor driving high prices
Power-hungry data centers have been popping up all over, to serve the boom in artificial intelligence. The Energy Department projects data centers and other commercial customers will use more electricity than households for the first time ever next year. That’s a challenge for policymakers, who have to decide how to accommodate that extra demand and who should foot the bill.
“Regulators always play catchup,” says John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “The growth of data centers is far outpacing the response by grid managers, public utility commissions across the country, and they’re racing to catch up.”
Natural gas exports also push prices higher
The soaring price of natural gas is also pushing power prices higher. More than 40% of electricity is generated using natural gas. As more gas is exported as liquid natural gas, the competition from foreign customers is driving up the price utilities have to pay here at home.
It’s going to get worse now that the government has decided that renewable energy isn’t worth investing in (since Trump doesn’t like the “look” of wind and solar) even though it’s cheaper.
And by the way:
The federal government currently spends about $4 billion a year to help low-income families with energy bills. But Wolfe says that’s not enough to cover rising cooling costs in the summer. And President Trump’s proposed budget would end the assistance altogether.
But are egg prices too high? That’s all that matters.