Pennsylvania households paid noticeably more for electricity last year, and a state regulator’s new five-year outlook warns that a wave of data centers could reshape the grid — raising fresh questions about who pays to power them.
The average residential customer paid 17.11 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, up from 15.60 cents in 2024, according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s Electric Power Outlook for Pennsylvania 2025–2030, released in late August.
The roughly 10% jump was driven partly by several base-rate distribution increases completed in 2025, but the PUC says the primary driver was higher generation and transmission costs tied to natural gas — which fueled about 42.8% of Pennsylvania generation in 2025 and whose national delivered price rose 36% from an all-time low the year before.
Ironically, Pennsylvanians used slightly less power even as they paid more. Total electricity consumption statewide fell 0.24% in 2025, to 142,298 gigawatt-hours, while the number of customers grew 0.39% to just over 6 million.
The typical residential customer used 9.60 megawatt-hours, and over the past decade residential usage has actually declined an average of 0.77% a year while nominal costs climbed 5.24% annually.
The bigger story is what’s coming. The state’s large utilities project total residential and commercial usage will grow only modestly through 2030 — about 0.52% and 0.32% a year, respectively — but industrial demand is forecast to soar an average of 18.56% annually, driven almost entirely by anticipated large-load customers, particularly data centers.
Nowhere is that clearer than in PPL Electric Utilities’ territory, which covers 29 counties across central and eastern Pennsylvania, including the Lehigh Valley.
PPL, based in Allentown, projects total usage rising an average 20.51% a year, with industrial demand climbing 51.05% annually — a spike the report says is “almost entirely due to the onboarding of large data centers.” PPL’s projected data-center growth dwarfs that of every other Pennsylvania utility.
The PUC stresses these are forecasts, not guarantees; data-center projects can be delayed or abandoned over financing, technology or economic factors. It also notes PPL’s projected growth doesn’t, by itself, signal a capacity shortfall.
During a Thursday news conference showcasing new technology to meet increased demand, PPL President Christine Martin noted the company has put in measures ensuring hyperscale data centers pay for associated infrastructure needs, including “a dedicated rate class for large load customers that use more than 50 megawatts,” The Morning Call reported.
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“What that means is those customers are paying for their growth, they’re paying for the investments we are making to serve them,” Martin said, according to the publication’s report.
Still, the report flags real reliability pressures. NERC has classified the PJM region — which includes Pennsylvania — as “elevated risk” for 2026–2028 and “high risk” beginning in 2029, as demand climbs and older plants retire. Pennsylvania’s 2025 transmission plan identified about $3.56 billion in projects, more than double the prior year’s $1.64 billion. And during a brutal January cold snap, PJM incurred roughly $798 million in out-of-market “uplift” costs to keep the lights on.
To manage the growth, the PUC in May finalized a model tariff for large-load customers, aimed at ensuring — in the report’s words — that costs are handled appropriately “rather than simply shifted to existing families and businesses.”
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