ComEd electric customers will see at least a 12% jump in monthly charges starting in June as big data centers increase demand for power and an unrelated consumer credit ends.
The average monthly residential bill is $107, according to ComEd, but that charge will jump to at least $120 as more high-tech operations suck up electricity. A credit related to nuclear power and renewable energy that was a temporary relief from high rates is also set to end at the end of this month.
The majority of the monthly increase is due to the credit expiring, but as much as a quarter of that jump in cost is due to the high demand of power and prices set by a multistate grid operator known as PJM Interconnection.
The upcoming increase follows a double-digit spike in electric bills a year ago that was credited almost entirely to the rise of data centers, most of which are powering artificial intelligence applications.
And the data center trend doesn’t appear to be slowing.
ComEd says there are more than 80 data centers in Northern Illinois that use massive amounts of power. In a state filing last year, the utility said there were another 75 proposed commercial projects in the region that would also be large electricity users.
The estimated power use for those proposed operations is far more than the amount of electricity currently being produced, ComEd said. It’s not clear how many of those proposed operations will actually go forward.
To illustrate its point, the utility said in last year’s filing that the amount of electricity being estimated for use by a single large commercial operation, such as a data center, is on average enough to power 1,400 big box retail stores.
Data centers are needed as the biggest tech companies in the world, including Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are in a race to develop AI for as many uses as possible.
The problem with electricity demand in Illinois and across the U.S. is that older, dirtier and uneconomical sources of power, like coal plants, have been closing while new sources, like wind and solar, are not being developed fast enough to meet the rising demand.
That means major fixes are going to be needed as the number of data centers explode and require more energy. One option is to put the cost of new power on the tech companies that will use the data centers, putting the onus on them to pay the bills for new electricity sources.
Electric bills “are on track to keep rising unless data centers are required to bring their own new clean energy and fully fund the infrastructure they depend on,” said Madeline Semanisin, Illinois policy director for climate and energy at Natural Resources Defense Council.
The rapid growth of AI and the data centers needed to keep the momentum going is creating concerns not just over the use of power but also for the huge amounts of water needed for cooling.
A bill being considered by lawmakers in Springfield aims to provide oversight and more transparency around the explosive growth in data centers, but time is running out this legislative session, which wraps up at the end of this month.
One of the problems with the growth of data centers, according to a proponent of the bill, is that development deals with local governments are cloaked in secrecy and have few checks on potential impacts from the use of power, water and other resources.
“Right now there are no guardrails. Big tech is running the show,” said Jennifer Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. “Illinois at a turning point, and we’re heading in the wrong direction.”
For its part, ComEd notes that it doesn’t produce the energy and says the prices it pays for electricity are driven by the anticipated future demand and set by Pennsylvania-based grid operator PJM. That operator has drawn the ire of Gov. JB Pritzker and other politicians because of resulting high costs for consumers.
“We recognize that these increases – which ComEd does not set, control or profit from – place real pressure on households already managing rising expenses,” the utility said in a statement.