How the AI-driven data center boom is leading to skyrocketing energy bills

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Atlanta — It is simply a sunny day successful Atlanta, Georgia, but wrong Carolyn Kayne's 3,000-square-foot home, it is cold.

"I'm walking astir successful a skis suit trying to enactment lukewarm successful the winter," Kayne told CBS News.

It is conscionable 1 of the ways Kayne has tried to bushed her skyrocketing electrical bills, which person astir doubled successful 2 years.

She has present turned disconnected her vigor and water, leaving overmuch of her location hard to unrecorded in.

"I unrecorded successful a small flat successful the back," Kayne explains.

Patty Durand, laminitis of the nonprofit advocacy radical Georgians for Affordable Energy says Carolyn's concern is not unique.

"The mean measure for an mean lawsuit utilized to beryllium astir $150 a month," Durand said. "The mean measure present is $225."

A CBS News investigation recovered that Georgia Power, the largest vigor supplier successful the state, imposed six complaint hikes successful the past 3 years.

During which time, the Vogtle atomic powerfulness works went online and Georgia saw a roar successful information centers. Those information centers, Durand says, came to Georgia for discounted power.

The increasing usage of artificial intelligence has sparked a demand for information centers. And crossed the U.S., caller information centers are driving up inferior bills in astatine slightest 13 states, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Americans who unrecorded adjacent information centers are paying arsenic overmuch arsenic 267% much a period for vigor than 5 years ago, a 2025 Bloomberg's analysis determined.

This week, meanwhile, Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a measure that would person made her authorities the archetypal to prohibition operation of caller information centers.

"I judge it indispensable and important to analyse and program for the imaginable impacts of large-scale information centers successful Maine, arsenic the usage of artificial quality becomes much widespread," Mills said successful a connection announcing her reasoning.

"Data centers volition adhd billions of dollars to costs to energy rates successful Georgia if we don't get amended extortion than we person close now," Durand said.

Within the past year, Georgia Power announced a complaint frost and agreed to usage gross from ample customers similar information centers to little costs for residents. Georgia Power denies passing the outgo of information centers connected to others.

"There is nary no hazard that residential customers volition extremity up paying for the costs of this ample growth, including information centers," Aaron Mitchell, elder vice president for strategical maturation astatine Georgia Power said.

But for Georgians similar Kayne who are already taking utmost measures, it mightiness beryllium excessively late.

"I conjecture possibly it is time, you know, to springiness up my home," Kayne said.

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