No Way!!! While Average US Residential Electrical Rates Rose 10% 2022-24, Industrial Rates (AI) Fell 3%

This is my shocked face . . .

Over the past few years, millions of Americans have seen their electricity bills skyrocket. Since February 2020, electricity prices have increased by an average of 40 percent across the country. In some areas, the rate is even faster — in Washington, D.C., electricity costs increased 93 percent from July 2020 to July 2025.

But the rise in costs hasn’t affected each type of user equally. According to recent data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), residential electricity costs — the average price faced by ordinary home and apartment dwellers in the U.S. — rose by 10 percent between 2022 and 2024. Commercial users, spanning everything from small corner stores to giant, energy-sucking data centers, have seen rates increase just 3 percent. And industrial users saw prices fall by 2 percent during the same period. The data was recently covered by Yale Climate Connections. That means that even as huge data centers — some using as much electricity as a small city — have plugged into the grid in recent years, they aren’t seeing the same spikes in prices as residential customers. That may come as a surprise to many electricity users.

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But there are more complex reasons as well. To set prices for each sector, utilities submit plans to their local regulator, and then face a complex system of political bargaining and negotiation. In theory, each group is supposed to pay an amount that aligns with the cost to bring them power — but in practice, different groups can lobby for lower prices.

“This is not a physics problem that has one right answer,” Peskoe said. “Everybody comes in with their own self-interest.” In general, residential customers have the least lobbying power, compared with large data centers or other companies. “Residential consumers feel like they don’t have a voice in our utility regulatory system,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines, a group that works to lower costs of electricity for consumers around the country.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/01/15/power-electricity-cost-data-centers/