{
  "video_id": "reddit_1ubenzk",
  "channel_slug": "singularity",
  "channel_handle": "r/singularity",
  "title": "Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the United States [shows the opposite]",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ubenzk/have_data_centers_raised_your_electric_bill/",
  "external_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777",
  "upload_date": "20260621",
  "published_at": "2026-06-21T02:47:10+00:00",
  "transcript": "We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach. Despite prevailing sentiment, the finding is consistent with economic reasoning: existing large power system fixed costs, economies of scale in transmission and distribution, and declining unit costs for generation imply that durable demand growth lowers average prices. We find patterns of economies of scale for transmission, distribution, and generation costs as well as within and across retail customer classes. We caution that future supply constraints could reverse the effect.\n\n\n\n--- Top Comments ---\n\n\n[18 upvotes] I can tell you this: in Italy we have no data centers and our electric bills are the highest in the World.\n\n[15 upvotes] I have experienced this. Rates went down 20% after data center in my neborhood went online. It doubled the usage of electricity in my town. Not sure any other info but my price went down so I won't complain \n\n[11 upvotes] Public utilities are openly raising rates on the record to invest in infrastructure for anticipated data center demand. They are raising our rates on spec and not being secretive about it. \n\n[11 upvotes] \n\nMy layman interpretation is the average cost of power would be reduced by assuming energy providers increase their capacity to meet the increasing demand on the grid from data centers. \n\nI suspect that increase in energy production capacity will be reactive and no proactive though. Utility companies likely won't invest toward increasing their capacity until they have seen an increased profit from the increased demand.\nMeaning short term, I suspect people will pay more based on an increased demand until power generation catches up and increases supply.\nThis paper seems to be making projections in the long term.\n\nIt is also briefly mentioned that increasing capacity on the grid has become significantly more expensive due to government cutting back on wind and solar investment, supply chain issues and backlog of turbine imports.\nAren't 2/3 of these power supply issues a direct result of Trump admin energy policy and tariff policy?\nI think the backlog on turbine orders is just because of increased demand, al though they would also be more significantly expensive in the US due to tariffs\n\nSo...current energy cost increases seem to partly trace back to the Trump admin policy?\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[13 upvotes] The paper is written by a thinktank funded by utilities: [again](https://energyandpolicy.org/epri-smartargets/)",
  "transcript_chars": 2560,
  "ingested_at": "2026-06-21T13:30:19.863668+00:00",
  "source": "reddit",
  "yt_meta": {
    "score": 69,
    "upvote_ratio": 0.75,
    "num_comments": 24,
    "author": "truecakesnake",
    "is_self": false
  }
}