Kilito Chan | Moment | Getty pictures
Electricity prices rise quickly for US budgets, even if inflation has cooled down in total cooling.
According to the consumer price index for May 2025, electricity prices rose by 4.5% last year – almost twice as high as the inflation rate for all goods and services.
The estimated administration of the USENERGIE IMMIEDATION in May that electricity prices for retail would surpass inflation by 2026. The prices have already risen faster than the width of inflation rate since 2022, it said.
“It is a fairly simple story: it is a story of supply and demand,” said David Hill, Executive Vice President of Energy at the cross -party policy center and former General Counsel in the US Ministry.
There are many to contribute to factors, said economists and energy experts.
At a high level, the growth of the electricity requirement and the deactivation of power generation systems exceeds the pace at which the electrical network is added to new electricity generation, said Hill.
The prices are regional
According to the UVP, the US consumers, in which the data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics quoted, spent an average of around $ 1,760 for electricity.
Of course, the costs can vary greatly, depending on where consumers live and their electricity consumption. In March 2025, the average US budget paid around 17 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity-sound UVP data in North-Dakota up to about 41 cents per kWh in Hawaii in Hawaii.
In the households in certain regions, their electricity invoices will increase faster than those in others, experts said.
The electricity prices for residential buildings in the Pacific, Middle Atlantic and New England areas regions, in which consumers already increase much more per kilowatt hour of electricity, according to the RRP, increases more than the national average.
“Electricity prices are determined regionally, not determined worldwide like oil prices,” said Joe Seydl, senior markets at the JP Morgan Private Bank.
The RRP expects the average electricity prices in retail to increase by 13% from 2022 to 2025.
This means that the annual electricity calculation of the average budget in 2025 could increase by $ 219 in 2022, according to CNBC analysis of the federal data to around $ 1,683. This presupposes that their use is unchanged.
However, prices for the households of the Pacific area will increase by 26% during this period, more than 21 cents per kilowatt hour, estimates of the RRP. In the meantime, households in the West North Central region will increase by 8% during this period, almost 11 cents per kWh.
However, certain electricity trends will take place nationwide, not only regionally, experts said.
Data centers are “energy hungry”
The QTS Center Center complex in Fayetteville, Georgia, on October 17, 2024.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty pictures
The growth of electricity needs has been “minimal” in recent decades due to the increase in energy efficiency. According to Jennifer Curran, Senior Vice President for planning and operations on the independent system operator of the mid -continent, who testified in March at a hearing on the energy energy from House. (Miso, a regional electric grid operator, serves 45 million people in 15 states.)
In the meantime, the US electrification flows through the use of electronic devices, smart home products and electric vehicles, said Curran.
Now the demand has been available in the coming years, and data centers are an important contribution, experts said.
Data centers are extensive warehouses of computer servers and other IT devices that do cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technical applications.
More from personal finances:
How to protect financial assets in the middle of immigration attacks, deportation disorders
The GOP training plan can trigger “avalanche from student loans”.
This credit card behavior is a under-the-radar risk
The electricity consumption of data centers triples 176 terawatt hours in the decade by 2023, according to the US Ministry of Energy. The use is expected to be doubled by 2028, said the agency.
It is expected that data centers are used up to 12% of the total US current up to 2028, compared to 4.4% in 2023, according to the Ministry of Energy.
They are “energy hungry,” said Curran. The growth of demand is “unexpectedly” and mainly due to the support of artificial intelligence, she said.
In 2030, the US economy is expected to consume more electricity for the processing of data than for the production of all energy-intensive goods, including aluminum, steel, cement and chemicals, according to the International Energy Agency.
The continued electrification among companies and households is also expected to increase electricity requirements, experts said.
The United States has moved from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas to reduce the warm-house gas emissions of planets.
For example, more households can use electric vehicles instead of gasoline operations or electrical heat pumps compared to a gas oven. The more efficient technologies can be, but increased the overall demand on the power grid, said experts.
The population growth and cryptocurrency reduction, another energy -intensive activity, also contribute, said BPC's Hill.
“Everything about infrastructure”
Thianchai Sitthikongsak | Moment | Getty pictures
With increasing electricity requirements, the United States also has problems compared to the transfer and distribution of the electricity distribution, said Seydl from JP Morgan.
At this point in increasing electricity prices, “everything about infrastructure,” he said. “The network has aged.”
For example, the growth of the transmission line “in a Rut” and “far below” energy department for 2030 and 2035, wrote Michael Cembalest, chairman of the market and investment strategy for JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, in an energy report in March.
The lack of transformer equipment – which splits up and down via the US network – are creating another obstacle, wrote harpsichord. The delivery times are about two to three years, from about four to six weeks in 2019, he wrote.
“Half of all US transformers is at the end of their usage life and must be replaced, together with replacement in areas affected by hurricanes, floods and forest fires,” wrote harpsichord.
Since 2018, transformers and other transmission devices have experienced the second highest inflation rate for all wholesale goods in the USA, he wrote.
In the meantime, certain facilities such as old drive providers were shut down with fossil fuels and the new energy capacity for replacing was relatively slowly online, said BPCS Hill. There was also prices for equipment and work inflation, so it costs more to build facilities, he said.