Saad Ullah
⬤ Electricity bills rise everywhere in America - yet the sharpest pain falls on states where AI firms erect huge data centers. In Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois besides Ohio the price of industrial power has jumped 43 percent in five years leaving the country wide 26 percent rise far behind. The split began to open in late 2022, the exact moment when AI infrastructure started its explosive expansion.
⬤ ChatGPT's release in November 2022 set off a scramble for computing power and electricity prices record that event plainly. The price index for the leading data center states now stands at 143, while the national figure is 126; both began at 100 in September 2020. Household budgets feel the same pressure. Residents in those five states pay 7.0 percent more each year since 2022, against 5.5 percent for the nation. Total electricity inflation has reached 36 percent since 2020 outpacing the general inflation rate of 25 percent.
⬤ The data mark the turning point. Until late 2022 power costs in data center hot spots moved in step with the rest of the country. After AI demand surged the two paths split. Cloud giants or AI training farms now pull enormous loads from grids that were never designed for such volume. The gap keeps widening as 2025 approaches.
⬤ The issue reaches past monthly utility statements - it redraws the economic map of whole regions. Energy use has become AI expansion's largest hidden cost and it appears in hard figures for businesses and households alike. As more data centers switch on next to AI workloads grow, demand will keep outpacing supply. That prospect points to further upward pressure on electricity prices, a force that may decide where companies build, how they tally costs and which regions remain viable in the race for AI leadership.
Saad Ullah
