My power bill came Thursday and I read it twice. Same house, same window units, almost the same kilowatt count as last August. The number at the bottom had moved.
That gap is this whole week in one envelope. Wednesday at 8:30 in the morning brings the inflation report the Fed watches closest. Wednesday after the close, the chipmaker at the center of the AI trade reports its quarter.
Both numbers measure the same construction boom. It has already reached this cohort, and it came in as a utility bill.
American households will use about as much electricity in 2026 as in 2025. The federal energy agency puts that growth at half a percent. The average residential price is up almost 5% anyway, to 18.2 cents a kilowatt-hour.
A data center is the warehouse where the computing happens. Thousands of machines in a room, drawing power like a small town. Nothing but racks and cooling.
Their demand sits in the commercial column of the same forecast. That column is growing four times as fast as yours. Next year it passes the household column for the first time.
You are on a fixed income and the meter is not. Social Security trues up once a year, in January, on last year’s inflation. A rate case does not wait for January. August is a long way from it.
18.2 cents
Average US household price per kilowatt-hour in 2026, close to 5% above 2025
0.5%
Growth in household electricity use this year, and again next year
63%
Share of one year’s capacity-price rise on the PJM grid its own market monitor put on data centers
The mechanics are duller than the headline. A grid operator runs an auction to keep enough generation on call for the years ahead. New demand raises the price of that promise, and the cost is spread across everybody on the system.
PJM runs the biggest of those grids, from Chicago out to the Virginia suburbs. Its own independent monitor tied 63% of one delivery year’s capacity-price increase to data centers. That worked out to $9.3 billion, collected from customers in rates.
Where the warehouses cluster, the bill moves first. Virginia holds more of them than any state, and its household prices rose more than 13% in a year. Maryland is up 74% over five years.
Those are retirement states. Both sit on the list of places this cohort moves to for the taxes and the grandchildren.
Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and which aisle a power bill actually lands in.
The case against my own read is worth your time. A serious review of the research in May found no evidence that households are subsidizing these buildings. Read that before you nod along.
Bills move for several reasons at once. Utilities have been rebuilding poles, wires and substations since 2022, and that spending lands in rates on its own.
The politics are moving too. States are writing special tariffs so the largest customers carry more of their own cost. A voter on a fixed income is the reason.
The arithmetic
Prices and use: US Energy Information Administration Short-Term Energy Outlook, May 2026 edition. Average residential price 18.2 cents a kilowatt-hour in 2026, close to 5% above 2025; household electricity use up about 0.5% in 2026 and again in 2027; commercial use, the column that holds data centers, up 2.2% in 2026 and 5.3% in 2027, passing the residential column in 2027. Capacity prices: Monitoring Analytics, the independent market monitor for the PJM grid, attributed 63% of the 2025/26 capacity-price increase to data centers, about $9.3 billion recovered from customers in one delivery year. State prices: EIA retail price data, Virginia household prices up more than 13% year over year; Maryland up 74% from March 2021 to March 2026, per the same federal series. The counter-case: Energy and Environmental Economics, Understanding the Drivers of Rising Electricity Rates and the Role of Data Centers, May 2026, which found no evidence of cross-subsidy by other customers. Wednesday’s calendar: July PCE inflation at 8:30 a.m. Eastern with the second estimate of second-quarter GDP.
Wednesday gets the headlines twice, once at breakfast and once after the close. The line that reaches your money shows up later, in a state docket nobody covers, under a name like large-load tariff. Read the back of your bill this month. The AI boom is in there, spelled as a rider.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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