QUESTIONS
Do data centers raise your electric bill?
The honest answer is that it depends on where you live and what has to be built — and the best recent evidence points in two different directions.
THE SHORT ANSWER
The research genuinely disagrees, and anyone who tells you it is settled is selling something. A 2026 study using national data found that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly between 2015 and 2024, because spreading fixed costs across more demand lowers the average. Virginia's legislature, looking forward rather than back, estimated that a typical Dominion Energy residential customer could see generation and transmission costs rise by $14 to $37 a month in real terms by 2040. Both can be true: the first is about what has already happened nationally, the second about what one state expects to have to build.
How much electricity this is actually about
U.S. data centers used 176 terawatt-hours in 2023, about 4.4% of all electricity in the country, up from 58 terawatt-hours in 2014. The same report projects between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours by 2028, which would be roughly 6.7% to 12% of U.S. electricity. The width of that range is not sloppiness; nobody knows.
Why the answer depends on where you live
A bill goes up when a utility has to build something new and is allowed to recover the cost from customers. If new demand fits into capacity that already exists, it can push average rates down. If it forces new generation and new transmission lines, someone pays for those, and the fight in most states is over who.
That fight happens at your state's public utility commission, usually in a rate case, and it is a separate process from the county meeting where the building itself is approved. The two are decided by different people, often years apart.
Who is telling you this
The national study finding lower rates was written mostly by researchers at EPRI, the electric power industry's own research institute, and has not yet been peer reviewed. Its authors add their own warning: future supply constraints could reverse the effect. The Virginia estimate comes from a legislature's investigation of its own state. We think both are worth reading, and we would rather show you the disagreement than resolve it for you.
WHERE THIS COMES FROM
- Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the United StatesWatten, Bistline and Blanford (arXiv preprint) · June 18, 2026Two of the three authors work at EPRI, the electric power industry's own research institute. Not yet peer reviewed.
- Data Centers in Virginia (Report 598)Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, Virginia General Assembly · December 9, 2024Virginia's legislature investigating its own largest data center market, at the legislature's request.
- DOE Releases New Report Evaluating Increase in Electricity Demand from Data CentersU.S. Department of Energy · December 2024
- 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage ReportLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for the U.S. Department of Energy · December 2024
Find out what is planned near you.
General answers only go so far. The useful version of this question is about one parcel, one county and one meeting date.
OTHER QUESTIONS
- How much water does a data center use?Anywhere from less than a house to more than a large office building, depending entirely on how it is cooled — and the cooling method is written in the application.
- Do data centers lower nearby property values?There is very little research, it does not show a large drop, and the one detailed U.S. study found the opposite — but it covered a single region.
- How close to homes can a data center be built?There is no national rule. Your county or town decides, the distances vary from none to several hundred feet, and the rules are being rewritten right now.
- What happens at a rezoning hearing for a data center?A planning commission recommends, elected officials vote, and the public gets a few minutes each — usually after the decision has been shaped in documents most people never read.