Big Data Fuels Rising US Grid Costs

Surging data center requirements associated with big data and AI are pushing up costs of power on the largest US electricity grid.

The expansion of big data infrastructure is creating more pressure on the largest power grid in the United States, with data centers accounting for an estimated $6.5 billion of electricity procurement costs. As determined by a new report conducted by Monitoring Analytics, expenditures associated with data centers connected to PJM Interconnection LLC were $23.1 billion from June 2025 to May 2028.

The figures are based on a December capacity auction and reflect the speed of energy needs in terms of big data workloads and AI systems. In the three auctions that have taken place since mid-2024, data centers have comprised nearly half of the overall $47.2 billion cost in all three markets.

As big data and AI are adopted on a large scale, data centers are sucking down massive amounts of electricity, leaving new infrastructure investments in order to support the aging transmission infrastructure. These costs are thus passed on to the consumers, and many are already experiencing the increasing bills for electricity. The issue has become political in several states.

Responding regulators take the first step. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently ordered PJM to come up with rules guaranteeing that developers of data centers pay their fair share of grid-related costs. PJM's network serves almost one-fifth of the US population.

As big data continues to form the basis of digital transformation, balancing how technology is developed with making energy cost-effective is becoming an important policy and infrastructure challenge.