ResearchMedium importance
Study: data centers explain only 4% of the rise in US residential power bills since 2020
The working paper “The Cost of Intelligence” (Vishrut Rana, Christian Kaps and Serguei Netessine) matches data center capacity built between 2020 and 2025 with local power prices. Result: an average increase of 5.4 US$/MWh in the industrial price (15% of the observed rise) and 1.7 US$/MWh in the residential price (4%). Big Tech data centers showed no visible effect on prices; the impact comes from colocation data centers and certain utilities. The authors conclude that the debate over data centers and power bills is overstated.
Published in edition no. 17 of Noticiário do Joãozinho ·
Translated by Joãozinho AI from the original Brazilian Portuguese edition. Facts, numbers and sources are the same as in the original; quotes, video titles and source names stay in their original language. Read the original in Portuguese
Original source
Rana, Kaps e Netessine (working paper)SSRN
https://christiankaps.com/papers/cost-of-intelligence-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices.html