[kmod]

This $23B number that gets thrown around is not the increase to the public. The wording in the referenced report is

> Based on actual auction clearing prices and quantities and uplift MW, inclusion of existing and forecast data center load growth resulted in a combined total increase in capacity market revenue for the 2025/2026 BRA, the 2026/2027 BRA, and the 2027/2028 BRA of $23,100,955,341.

This is the increase in revenue to PJM from adding datacenter customers, and includes both the amount that datacenters paid as well as the amount that other customers paid due to higher prices from datacenters. So Fortune calling it an increase to "the public" means that they didn't read the report they are using as their source and are probably just repeating what they thought someone else meant.

Bloomberg in the past worded it as "data centers will add at least $23 billion to customer bills" in April and "added a minimum of $23 billion to customer bills" in February. Which while technically correct (datacenters are customers) seems meant to be misleading. And now that's the number that's getting thrown around as the increase to "the public".

The part I don't get is that the journalists could just give the actual number for the quantity that they are referring to (the amount that non-datacenters paid due to higher rates due to datacenter loads): when I calculated it a few months ago I think it was something like $16 billion rather than $23 billion. I feel like the story would have the same impact if the headline number was $16B as $23B, but $16B has the benefit of not being a misrepresentation of the situation.

---

Also I would definitely recommend checking out the PJM BRA report. It's a bit dense but not too hard to follow, and my personal takeaway was that the PJM market is just very dysfunctional and they are blaming the datacenters instead. I thought SemiAnalysis had a good analysis of it: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/are-ai-datacenters-inc...

[apple4ever]

> my personal takeaway was that the PJM market is just very dysfunctional and they are blaming the datacenters instead.

That matches my thoughts after reading it too.

[mukbangpervert]

Or how about this framing (using your own numbers): for every dollar a datacenter is charged for electricity, regular hard-working Americans get charged $2.

[njovin]

First they gave all the water away for free to big ag, and now they're doing the same with the power.

[mukbangpervert]

When they gave water to big ag, we got to buy food.

With this, we pay extra to lose our jobs.

[datadrivenangel]

The ag water was used to grow hay which was shipped to China and Brazil...

[riknos314]

And corn which was used to make energy (as ethanol) at a fraction of the land efficiency of solar.

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compa...

[dunWithIt]

Nbd sun will provide power for a few billion years still

Not the political hill to die on

[njovin]

The hill to die on might be the one behind your house that has a nice view of the illegal methane generators that these data centers are using, because they sure as hell aren't running on solar.

[simianwords]

Surely that’s a different mode for of criticism than the one in the post?

[blackqueeriroh]

Well, I think some of those hardworking Americans would be happy to pay some of those $2 because otherwise all the SaaS services and other services, platforms, and tools running in datacenters wouldn’t be accessible to them.

Or did I read this wrong and somewhere it said only datacenters running inference or training for LLMs?

[doikor]

The thing people are pissed about is giving better rates to datacenters.

Compare this to most of Europe (and Texas if I understood correctly) where the detacenters buy their electricity from the same market as everyone else (in Europe the spot market or futures) meaning they effectively pay the same price as everyone else.

It’s when they do some back room deal with the local public utility to get 50% off and offload the real costs to the public when people get angry.

[linkregister]

Is there an example of this happening? Isn't the problem that datacenters are drawing electricity at the market rate and driving the cost up, rather than paying a surcharge for the difference?

[skew-aberration]

I don't think the mechanism is that different, and even if it was Europe, etc would have the same issue - data centers would still bid up the price for existing capacity, and the future capacity added to accommodate the dcs would be added at a higher marginal rate too because scarcity of new supply + base load nature of dc loads. So the problem will get worse before it gets better

[doikor]

Yes datacenters inccrease the prices here but they don't get a cheaper price then everyone else. There is a massive difference there.

[skew-aberration]

Concrete examples? Quick google only shows small discounts for DCs relative to other wholesale industrial consumers, which could be partially explained away by the flat load, lack of stability concerns, no need for power factor correction hardware, etc. I think 'bidding up the market' is the dominant mechanism, here in Australia (spot market + futures) consumer prices are projected to increase 26%.

[heisgone]

In Quebec, new data center will have to pay almost twice the price of what citizen are paying. it's 14 cents/kwh vs about 8 cents/kwh. Crypto center are set to pay 18 cents/kwh. That's the advantage of having a public utility.

[TitaRusell]

Building a data center in my country is so expensive only Microsoft and Google do it.

The paperwork and environmental laws just aren't worth it.

[mukbangpervert]

True, I just left a hipster coffee shop in LA, and the liberals were whispering about their love of SaaS services, and their desire to socialize the costs of compute infrastructure.