The ledger: who has paid what
Documented data-center electricity cost shifts, as of 2026-08-12 - every entry sourced
The dollar figures in the data-centers-and-electricity debate are scattered across auction reports, commission orders and news stories - and constantly misquoted. This ledger keeps them in one place: dated, precisely stated (wholesale vs retail, attributed vs measured, in-effect vs projected), and linked to a source you can open. It is append-only; entries are never reworded after publication except to fix errors.
- $6.3 billion
PJM's Independent Market Monitor calculated that data centers drove $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion in total wholesale capacity charges from the 2028/29 auction (38%), and $29.4 billion of the $63.6 billion across the last four capacity auctions combined (46%). Monitor Joe Bowring called the shift a 'paradigm' change and urged a separate auction for hyperscaler load.
- $16.4 billion
PJM's 2028/29 Base Residual Auction cleared at the $325/MW-day price cap across the entire footprint; cleared supply times clearing price equals roughly $16.4 billion in wholesale capacity costs, the third consecutive auction near $16 billion. This is a wholesale figure that flows into retail bills over the delivery year.
Source: PJM Inside Lines (news release) - $23 billion
Fortune, citing a report by PJM's market monitor, reported that expected power demand from data centers was a primary reason for $23 billion in customer price increases that will last until at least the end of 2028 across the PJM region. The figure is the monitor's cumulative attribution, not a single rate increase.
Source: Fortune - ~$7.90/month
AEP Ohio's non-bypassable Basic Transmission Cost Rider rose about 0.79 cents/kWh on April 1, 2026 - roughly $7.90/month for a residential customer using 1,000 kWh - to recover transmission investment AEP ties to reliability and load growth including data centers. The Ohio Manufacturers' Association disputes the underlying data-center demand projections as inflated.
Source: ElectricityRates.com - $565.7M + $209.9M
Virginia's SCC approved Dominion base-rate increases of $565.7 million in 2026 and $209.9 million in 2027 (versus $822 million and $345 million requested) - about $11.24/month more in 2026 and $2.36/month in 2027 for a typical residential customer. The same order created a new GS-5 class for customers demanding 25 MW or more, with minimum-charge protections intended to insulate other ratepayers from data-center build-out costs starting January 1, 2027.
- $16.1 billion
PJM's 2026/27 Base Residual Auction cleared at the $329.17/MW-day cap everywhere; PJM's report states cleared supply times clearing price was $16.1 billion, up 9.5% from $14.7 billion in the 2025/26 auction. PJM notes this wholesale value is not identical to total cost to load, since self-supplied and bilaterally hedged load is not exposed to the clearing price.
- >$440 million
A May 2025 IEEFA briefing note found West Virginia electricity customers will pay more than $440 million for two proposed PJM transmission lines - the Mid-Atlantic Reliability Link and Valley Link - that were proposed in response to demand growth in northern Virginia driven largely by data centers. IEEFA argues PJM's cost-allocation process should be reformed so ratepayers do not bear data-center-driven transmission costs.
Source: IEEFA - $9.33 billion
PJM's Independent Market Monitor found total 2025/26 capacity auction revenues were $14.69 billion, and that in its sensitivity analysis 'data center load by itself resulted in an increase in the 2025/2026 BRA revenues of $9,332,103,858 or 174.3 percent' - meaning existing plus forecast data-center load accounts for roughly 63% of the total wholesale capacity cost recovered from customers over June 2025–May 2026.
Amounts are not summed - they mix one-time, annual and per-month figures across different regions and mechanisms, and adding them would be exactly the kind of number abuse this page exists to prevent. Free to cite with attribution and a link.
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