{"id":264570,"date":"2026-05-09T08:27:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/264570\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T08:27:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:27:24","slug":"florida-takes-action-as-americans-face-1-billion-power-bill-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/264570\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Takes Action As Americans Face $1 Billion Power Bill Rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some Americans could see a huge rise to their power bills<\/a> in coming years because of unchecked data centers. But Florida<\/a> is fighting back.<\/p>\n

This week, Governor Ron DeSantis<\/a> signed a bill directing regulators to keep the costs of AI data centers<\/a> off residential utility bills, positioning the state as an early mover on a fast-growing energy<\/a> issue. <\/p>\n

It comes as Marylanders could face a $1.6 billion collective hike to their energy bills over the next ten years to subsidize grid costs to feed data centers, according to a state agency.<\/p>\n

Electricity prices have risen across much of the United States while AI-driven data centers rapidly expand<\/a> and concentrate power demand in specific locations, raising concerns that grid upgrades could be shifted to household customers.<\/p>\n

What To Know\"\"<\/p>\n

DeSantis signed SB 484 at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland, directing the Florida Public Service Commission to ensure large data center customers pay the full costs of required electrical infrastructure, transmission upgrades, and system expansions rather than shifting expenses to residential ratepayers.<\/p>\n

“You should not pay one more red cent for electricity because of a hyper-scale data center as an individual,” DeSantis said. “That’s just not right for the most wealthy companies in the history of the world to come in and have individual Floridians or Americans subsidize these hyper-scale data centers.”<\/p>\n

The law also reinforces local governments\u2019 authority to block data center projects and allows temporary confidentiality agreements between municipalities and tech companies for up to 12 months during negotiations.<\/p>\n

Across the U.S., regulators, consumer advocates and grid operators are increasingly warning that the rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers is pushing up electricity demand\u2014and, in many regions, household utility bills.<\/p>\n

Maryland Fights Back<\/p>\n

The Office of People\u2019s Counsel<\/a>, an independent state agency that represents\u00a0Maryland\u2019s residential electricity consumers, has argued in a complaint filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that Old Line State customers are effectively footing the bill for data center expansion because of how PJM Interconnection LLC, the largest U.S. grid operator, distributes the costs of transmission projects largely driven by the power demands of data centers located outside the state.<\/p>\n

Maryland has 53\u00a0data centers, according to Data Center Map<\/a>, considerably less than the U.S. states with the most, such as neighboring Virginia, which has 601. Across the U.S., there are 4,280\u00a0data centers, meaning Maryland only has 1.35 percent of the country’s share.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout FERC action, Maryland customers face paying billions for transmission infrastructure that PJM is advancing to benefit data centers,\u201d People\u2019s Counsel David Lapp said. \u201cMaryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects nor will they meaningfully benefit from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require PJM to allocate transmission costs tied to data-center growth to the regions where those facilities are located, or to charge the costs directly to the large data-center operators themselves.<\/p>\n

Newsweek has contacted PJM for comment via email outside of regular working hours.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time<\/a> Maryland’s Office of People\u2019s Counsel has taken issue with state bill payers subsidizing energy bills for energy centers that are not within state borders, particularly those in neighboring Virginia. <\/p>\n

In 2024, it urged federal regulators to reject PJM\u2019s plan to spread the costs of $5 billion in transmission upgrades tied largely to booming Virginia data centers, arguing Maryland residents would unfairly pay hundreds of millions of dollars despite receiving little benefit, with Lapp saying it is “fundamentally unfair to Maryland utility customers.”<\/p>\n

The agency said the projects are driven by massive new power demand from Virginia\u2019s data center industry and warned Maryland customers could face higher utility bills while Virginia utilities offset costs through new data center electricity sales.<\/p>\n

Bills Rise Across U.S.<\/p>\n

U.S. electricity prices have climbed 21 percent over the past five years. Annual increases hit 6.2 percent in 2023, followed by 4.9 percent in 2024, 3 percent in 2025 and 5.4 percent so far this year. While data centers are part of this spike, they’re not the only reason, with higher fuel costs, major grid upgrade investments and growing power demand from electric vehicles also contributing.<\/p>\n

For decades, data facilities have housed the servers and hardware that keep the internet running. But the proliferation of AI in recent years has driven demand for vast amounts of new<\/a>, energy-intensive computing equipment. <\/p>\n

According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce<\/a>, Americans now pay\u00a013.63 \u00a2\/kWh\u00a0on average for electricity, which is up 5 percent from 2024 and 22 percent over the past five years.\u00a0In Maryland, rates have risen 50.94 percent.<\/p>\n

In Virginia, which has the most data centers of any state, bills have risen 24.56 percent over the last five years. In California, which has among the highest energy costs in the country (some 27.63\u00a2\/kWh) bills have risen by 53.5 percent over the same period.<\/p>\n

States Move on Data Centers<\/p>\n

Florida is not the first state to move to protect bill payers from higher energy costs resultant of the boom in data centers. At least 11 states have proposed some legislation to restrict or ban data center development since late 2025, according to reporting by Axios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This isn’t necessarily just about costs: it’s also because data centers can be something of an eyesore, and are often not seen as contributing<\/a> much net good to local populations. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Maine became the first became <\/a>the first state to pass in its legislature a statewide moratorium on large new data centers. The legislation temporarily blocks facilities drawing more than 20 megawatts of power while the state studies impacts on the grid and communities. <\/p>\n

However, the move was later vetoed by Maine’s Democratic Governor Janet Mills.<\/p>\n

Another such example is a bill in New York state’s Senate, which would impose a moratorium on permits for new data centers and require the Public Service Commission to issue orders aimed at reducing the impact of such facilities on electricity and gas rates for customers.<\/p>\n

Update 05\/08\/2026 09:45 ET: This article has been updated to reflected that Maine’s governor vetoed legislation that would have halted some data center projects in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some Americans could see a huge rise to their power bills in coming years because of unchecked data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3950,4232,8373,52520,114039,5593,28,30,29,68140,35633,114038,412],"class_list":["post-264570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-amazon","tag-bills","tag-cost-of-living","tag-data-centers","tag-data-storage","tag-energy","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-maryland","tag-microsoft","tag-power-cut","tag-ron-desantis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}