The Problem Is Simple. The Policy Response Shouldn't Be This Slow.
My electric bill keeps going up. So does my wife's parents' bill. So do my coworkers'. So do my friends'. Every household in our part of rural Pennsylvania is paying more for electricity this year than last year, and none of us are using more power. We didn't buy anything new. We didn't change anything. The bill just went up.
I'm also the CTO of a managed service provider based out of Maryland. We support roughly 500 clients and 8,500 endpoints... dental practices, small businesses, Department of Defense contractors. The kind of operations that keep communities running. Every one of them is paying more too. Not because they're consuming more. Because trillion-dollar companies are pulling hundreds of megawatts off the same grid and letting the rest of us pick up the tab.
This isn't a complicated issue. It's a cost allocation failure dressed up as economic development. And regular people... families, small businesses, the people who actually live in these communities... are footing the bill for no good reason other than a handful of corporations are energy hogs who figured out they don't have to pay their own way.
What Actually Happened to Your Electric Bill
PJM Interconnection operates the largest electric grid in the country, spanning 13 states across the Mid-Atlantic. In 2024, PJM's capacity auction... the mechanism that determines how much generators get paid to guarantee availability... cleared at roughly ten times the previous year's prices in some delivery zones. Capacity costs get socialized across all ratepayers in a zone. So when a hyperscale data center drops a 500-megawatt load into your delivery area, tightens the supply-demand balance, and drives up the auction price... your dental office, your grocery store, your grandmother's house all absorb the cost increase.
A dental practice pulling 30 kilowatts and a data center pulling 200 megawatts are not the same kind of customer. But under current rate structures, they're averaged together. The data center creates the scarcity. You pay the premium. Your family pays the premium. Everyone you know pays the premium.
The "Jobs" Myth
Every data center proposal comes with the same pitch: jobs and tax revenue. Let's be honest about what that means.
A billion-dollar hyperscale data center campus employs 30 to 50 full-time staff once operational. That's it. Compare that to a manufacturing facility of equivalent capital investment that might employ 500 to 2,000 people. The jobs-per-dollar ratio isn't just bad... it's an insult to the communities being asked to absorb the infrastructure burden.
Construction jobs are temporary. 18 to 24 months and gone. And the specialized labor... high-voltage electrical, precision mechanical, industrial controls... frequently gets brought in from out of state because the local workforce doesn't carry the certifications required for that tier of facility. These aren't jobs for your neighbors. They're jobs for contractors who leave when the build is done.
As for tax revenue, data center developers routinely negotiate 10 to 20-year property tax abatements as a condition of siting. So the "tax revenue" argument evaporates before the concrete sets.
What communities actually get: a permanent increase in electricity costs, strained grid infrastructure, noise complaints, and a facility that runs 24/7 with a skeleton crew. Meanwhile, the families who were there before the data center arrived get to pay higher bills for the privilege of living near it. Loudoun County, Virginia is the cautionary tale nobody seems to want to read.
The Federal Policy Failure
In July 2025, the Trump Administration released its AI Action Plan, which prominently features "promoting rapid buildout of data centers." An accompanying executive order directs agencies to accelerate federal permitting for data center infrastructure, including construction on federal lands.
This is a policy designed for and by the hyperscalers. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta... the most profitable companies in human history... are being given a regulatory fast lane to build facilities that externalize their energy costs onto residential ratepayers. The administration frames this as "winning the AI race." But winning a race by forcing rural families to subsidize your fuel costs isn't a strategy. It's a subsidy for billionaires paid by people who can't afford it.
The fundamental question the administration refuses to engage with: why can't these companies bear the cost of their own power consumption? Why is my family's electric bill going up so that Microsoft can train its next model on the cheap?
Microsoft has signed deals to restart nuclear capacity at Three Mile Island. Google and Amazon are investing in small modular reactor companies. They know they need dedicated generation. But they're pursuing dedicated power in addition to pulling from the public grid, not instead of. Because the grid is cheaper when someone else is subsidizing it.
We don't need centralized hyperscale data centers to deliver AI services. Training frontier models requires concentrated compute clusters, yes. But inference... the actual delivery of AI to end users... can run on distributed edge infrastructure, on-premise hardware, and efficient architectures that don't require 500-megawatt campuses. The insistence on centralized hyperscale buildout serves the business models of cloud providers, not the public interest. The administration either doesn't understand this distinction or doesn't care. Neither is acceptable.
States Are Waking Up. The Federal Government Should Follow.
Over 300 data center bills have been filed across more than 30 states in the first six weeks of 2026 alone. The legislative posture is shifting from incentives to oversight. States are starting to do what federal policy should have required from the beginning.
New York, South Dakota, and Oklahoma have introduced moratorium bills to pause data center construction while studying grid impacts. Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma are proposing to reduce or eliminate the tax incentives that attracted data centers in the first place. At least 18 states have introduced bills creating special rate classes for large energy users, requiring data centers to fund infrastructure improvements and demonstrate tangible benefits to ratepayers.
Maryland passed legislation explicitly stating that residential electric customers should not bear the financial risks of large load customer interconnection. State lawmakers have proposed requiring PJM to curtail power to data centers during emergencies if they haven't brought their own generation capacity. That's the right framework.
In Pennsylvania, legislation is moving through the General Assembly directing the PA Public Utility Commission to create regulations around data center development, with proposed investments in LIHEAP and community energy projects. The PA PUC issued a model large load tariff for public comment in December 2025. Consumer advocates are pushing for exit fees so that if a data center abandons its investment, ratepayers aren't left paying for stranded grid assets.
At the federal level, the White House and several state governors have pushed PJM to hold an emergency wholesale electricity auction where data centers would bid on 15-year energy supply contracts to fund $15 billion in new dedicated generation capacity. That's closer to the right answer: you want the power, you fund the plant.
What I'm Asking Lawmakers to Do
This isn't partisan. This is math. Republican or Democrat, your constituents are opening electric bills that are 30 to 50 percent higher than two years ago, and they're paying for infrastructure that serves trillion-dollar corporations. These are your neighbors. Your voters. The people who show up to town halls and ask why everything costs more. Here's your answer.
For state legislators: Pass large load tariff requirements that force data centers into their own rate class. Require cost-causation principles... the entity that creates the grid cost bears the grid cost. Eliminate or claw back tax abatements for facilities that don't meet employment thresholds. Mandate that data center developers fund dedicated generation or storage as a condition of interconnection approval.
For federal lawmakers: Direct FERC to establish cost allocation rules that prevent large load customers from socializing capacity costs onto residential ratepayers. Condition federal permitting acceleration on the requirement that data center operators bring their own generation. Stop treating the AI race as an excuse to bypass the basic principle that businesses should pay for the resources they consume.
For the administration: Reexamine the AI Action Plan's assumption that faster is always better. Speed without cost accountability isn't a strategy... it's a transfer of wealth from working families to the wealthiest corporations on earth. The American public doesn't owe Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or Meta cheap electricity. If their AI ambitions are as revolutionary as their pitch decks claim, they can afford to power them without raiding the public grid.
The Bottom Line
If a business model only works because residential ratepayers are subsidizing the electricity costs, it's not a viable business model. It's a grift with good PR.
The companies building these facilities have the capital to fund their own power generation. The technology exists for distributed AI delivery that doesn't require 500-megawatt campuses on the public grid. And the policy tools to fix the cost allocation are already being developed at the state level.
The question isn't whether we can fix this. It's whether our elected officials will act before the damage to ratepayers becomes permanent.
I'm watching. My family is watching. My coworkers, my friends, my 500 clients... we're all watching. And every household in PJM territory that opened a bigger electric bill this month is watching too.
Nate Smith is CTO of DTC Inc., a managed service provider based out of Maryland serving approximately 500 clients and 8,500 endpoints. He writes from rural Pennsylvania, where his electric bill keeps going up and nobody asked him if that was okay.