Last year increasingly looks like a turning point for American electricity bills. Retail electricity prices rose 7% in 2025 alone, part of a nearly 40% climb since 2021 that has made this decade the fastest period of electricity price growth on record. Wholesale costs are now 6.1% higher than a year prior — almost double the overall inflation rate — and Americans have grown louder in blaming the most visible new culprit: power-hungry data centers.
The real picture of Americans’ surging electricity costs is more nuanced, and yet the worst may still lie ahead. In the first three months of 2026 alone, utility companies requested state commissions to approve rate increases worth $9.4 billion, according to a report published Tuesday by PowerLines, a nonprofit focusing on utility regulation. That followed a record-breaking 2025, when utilities requested $31 billion in rate hikes for the full year — more than double the $15 billion sought in 2024. Critically, nearly half of those 2025 requests had not yet been approved as of early 2026, meaning a significant wave of increases is still working its way to consumers’ bills.
