The US thing with data centers has become a matter of first order and reason for rejection by a large part of the population. In addition to the pollution issuethese enormous infrastructures represent a brutal burden on the electrical network and citizens have been seeing for years how your electricity bills become more expensive. Well, they are going to go up even more.
what has happened. They tell it in New York Times. Each year, PJM organizes an auction in which electric companies bid the price at which they are willing to offer electricity during peak demand. The results of the last auction amount to 6.3 billion dollars that will be added to the final bill of clients over the next three years.
Why is it important. PJM acknowledges that, despite attempts to increase capacity: “electricity demand is growing faster than new generation can be built to meet it.” And they do not hesitate to name the culprit of this situation: “the main engine of this growth is the data centers”, enormous infrastructures that are being built at a speed that the electrical grid cannot match.
In figures. PJM is the largest electricity operator in the United States and its network serves 13 states, including Virginia, where the largest cluster in the world is located with more than 650 data centers. The 6.3 billion extra costs will be distributed among 67 million households, but the serious thing is that this is the last of many increases. According to Monitoring Analytics, the company in charge of monitoring the PJM market, since 2024 these auctions have already led to an increase of $29 billion in the bills of all clients.
Slowness. States and consumer advocacy associations criticize that PJM is very slow in connecting new generation energy such as solar, wind or batteries, solutions that would help alleviate the strain on the grid. We saw this recently when the heat wave stressed the network so much that had to allow data centers to connect their diesel generators. In states like California or Texas they did not have the same problem because they have an extensive battery system that allows them to store energy for this type of situation, but in the PJM area they are not prepared.
And now what. PJM depends on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so states can’t do anything to stop price increases. Governors’ hands are tied, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do anything. In 2024, the governor of Pennsylvania sued PJM for the increased cost of the bill. The result was an agreement that capped the price set in the auction. For its part, the state of New York has announced a statewide moratorium that prevents building large data centers for a period of one yearwhile evaluating their environmental and energy impact.
Image | Xataka with Magnific
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