Electricity Prices

PJM's market monitor ties $29.4 billion in capacity costs to data centers, and several battlegrounds on its grid saw some of this year's sharpest home power price increases. No candidate's fix touches costs locked in through May 2028.

Heat pumps can deliver up to three times more heat than the electricity they use. Backup resistance strips deliver one-to-one, and in some homes they end up doing much of the work.

Residential electricity averaged 18.83 cents per kilowatt-hour in April 2026, up 7.3% in a year. Most of that increase was granted in writing, by a state commission, at the end of an 11-month legal proceeding almost nobody attends.

Household power rates are up sharply in data-center states like Ohio and Virginia. Here's the mechanism turning the AI boom into a line on your bill, and what actually moves the number.