Ep. 26 - Why Data Centers Are Raising Your Electric Bill | Everyone Knows

Your electric bill went up 7.3 percent last year. The bigger increase is already approved and has not landed on your account yet.

Why Your Power Bill Keeps Going Up And Who Already Decided It | Everyone Knows Ep. 26

Everyone Knows | Episode 26 | Starborne Studios

In 2025, utilities asked state regulators for a record $31 billion in rate increases, more than double the year before. Most of it was approved. Nearly half was still sitting in front of regulators when this year started, so the money is granted and much of it has not hit your bill yet. Brian Bullock walks through where the increase came from, who was in the room when it was decided, and why nobody told you.

Three parts. All of them matter.

FIRST, the rate case. Your electric utility is a monopoly. There is no competitor down the road, so a state board decides what it can charge. That board does not just approve a price. It approves a rate of return, the profit it is allowed to earn on every plant, substation and power line it builds. The utility does not get rich selling you electricity. It gets rich building things and collecting a guaranteed percentage on them for the next 30 or 40 years. Brian shows you how to read the two halves of your own bill, how to pull up your state's pending rate cases in ten minutes, and why TVA customers have no hearing to go to at all.

SECOND, data centers. One large facility can pull as much power as a small city, and the market monitor inside PJM, the grid operator for 65 million people, tied data center demand to $23 billion in price increases running through 2028. Seven in ten Americans now oppose one being built near them. States are banning them, taxing them and auditing them. But the national numbers do not say what the coverage says they say. Line up the ten states with the most data centers against everybody else and the price per kilowatt hour is the same. Brian lays out where the server farm is a real driver and where it is a convenient excuse for a legislature that closed its own plants early.

THIRD, there is a rule sitting in state law that lets a utility charge you for a power plant before it is built, and keep charging if it never gets finished. It already cost one state about $9 billion for two reactors that have never produced a single watt, and the people there still pay for it every month on a line their bill does not show them. Then Congress took a swing at all of this and passed something 52 to 0. Unanimous. Wait until you hear what it actually does.

Everyone Knows takes the stories that hit regular people in the wallet and names who made the decision. No talking points. No party line. If you're tired of the spin, you're in the right place.

ABOUT EVERYONE KNOWS: Everyone Knows is an independent podcast hosted by Brian Bullock — author, storyteller, and founder of Starborne Studios. Every episode breaks down the stories that matter using one simple framework — who benefits, who gets hurt, why now, and what happens next. No cable news theatrics. No party line. Just a straight read on what's actually going on and what it means for regular people. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

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