Key Points:
Trigger Chain: PJM Capacity Auction → AI Data Center Demand → Household Rate Hike Across 13 States
Anchoring Statistic: The PJM 2026-2027 capacity auction cleared at $329.17 per megawatt-day, up from $28.92 two years ago, with PJM's independent market monitor attributing 63% of the surge (roughly $9.3 billion) to AI data center demand.
Conditional Trigger: NRDC forecasts the average PJM household will pay roughly $70 more per month by 2028 if the current data center buildout holds, with the Dominion Zone in northern Virginia already clearing at $444.26 per megawatt-day.
Momentum Data Point: $130 billion in data center projects were blocked or delayed in Q1 2026 per Data Center Watch, and a Gallup poll found seven in ten Americans oppose AI data center construction in their local area, with nearly half opposing it strongly.
I called a friend in Virginia last week. She told me her power bill jumped again. She figured it was the summer heat. It wasn't.
Her bill went up because Amazon needs a place to run its AI. So does Meta. So does Google. And the folks paying for it are people like her.
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I can't stop thinking about this.
There's a wholesale power market called PJM. Most folks have never heard of it. It runs the grid for 65 million people across 13 states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Jersey. Maryland. All the way down to DC.
Once a year, PJM runs an auction. It locks in future power supply. Two years ago, that auction cleared at $28.92 for each megawatt per day. This year it cleared at $329.17. That is more than ten times higher. In two years flat.
I don't think most people realize what just happened.
PJM has its own watchdog. A man named Joseph Bowring runs it. His group says 63% of that price jump came from one thing. AI data centers. That works out to $9.3 billion in extra costs. And that cost gets spread across every family on the grid.
The Natural Resources Defense Council ran the numbers. They think the average PJM household will pay about $70 more each month by 2028. Just for power. In DC, folks are already paying $10 more a month from last year's auction. In northern Virginia, where the data centers stack up thick, the price cleared even higher. $444.26 per megawatt per day.
Here's what worries me most.
There is a rule buried in the tariff book. When a giant tech company wants a huge chunk of power, the local utility builds the wires and the transformers to serve it. Then the utility puts that cost into everyone's rates. Not just the tech company's rates. Everyone's.
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Think about that for a second.
A hyperscaler wants 500 megawatts. That is enough power for a small city. The utility says fine. We will build you the wires. We will build you the substation. And we will bill it out to every household on the grid.
Even if the data center never gets built.
In just the first three months of this year, $130 billion in data center projects got blocked or delayed. Some got canceled outright. But the wires and the concrete pads are still on the books. And guess who owns them now. You do. Your neighbor does. The retired teacher down the street does.
I get it. This sounds like something that only happens in some far off boardroom. It doesn't. It shows up in your mailbox. Every single month.
If you run a business, it hits twice. Once at home. Once at the shop. A diner in Ohio. A hardware store in Pennsylvania. A dental office in New Jersey. All of them are paying the same bill.
Here is the piece I keep coming back to. Nobody voted on this. No family in Loudoun County chose to fund Amazon's server farm. No retiree in Cleveland signed a check for Meta's transformer. It just happens. Every month. In the mail.
This is where Elon Musk is housing an AI technology that Jeff Brown believes will help power the next monster IPO on Wall Street.
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And people are starting to notice.
On Tuesday, two brands dropped a 90 second ad. One is a water company called Liquid Death. The other is a beer brand owned by Travis and Jason Kelce. The ad tells folks to "send your pee to the AI data center of your choice." It sounds like a joke. It is not just a joke. That ad ran the same day Florida held a primary. The top Republican candidates for governor were running hard against data centers.
In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown is running ads calling his opponent "the face of data centers in Ohio." A Gallup poll this year found that seven in ten Americans do not want an AI data center built near them. Almost half feel that way strongly.
This is not a fringe issue anymore. This is Kelce brothers and country music voters and grandmothers in Fairfax County. All lining up on the same side.
Nobody knows how this ends.
But I know what it looks like today. A guy on the golf course looks at his power bill. He mutters something about inflation. He is wrong. His bill is up because Amazon needed a transformer. And he paid for it. And he does not know he paid for it. And nobody in his life has told him.
That is the number I want you to remember. Ten times. In two years. For a service you did not ask for and cannot cancel.
Your power bill is now a subsidy line. The biggest companies in the world are on the other end of the wire. And the meter keeps running.
More on this tomorrow.
— American Ledger
