Power Bills and Data Centers Put Utilities in the Midterm Spotlight: Home Electricity Prices Up More Than 10 Percent Since 2024

Electricity, an issue that sat quietly through past national elections, is a front-line midterm issue this year. U.S. electricity prices for homes have risen more than 10 percent since 2024, according to Energy Information Administration data in Reuters' October 31 report, read in full this cycle, outpacing the rise in other goods and services; in the battleground states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — also hot spots for new data centers — some bills have soared by triple the inflation rate. Charles Hua of the nonprofit PowerLines told Reuters it could be the first election to feature utilities and electricity as a prominent issue, because bills, in his account, keep rising with no end in sight.

The ballot itself carries the machinery. Seats on nine state public utility commissions are up for election this year — nearly all the states where voters elect their regulators, including the data-center hubs of Arizona and Georgia — and governors will be chosen in 36 states, with governors appointing regulators where they are not elected, Reuters reported. In Ohio, where residential bills have grown by more than 20 percent over two years, Democrat Amy Acton has promised to lower bills and supports a data center moratorium, while her Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy said he would assure Ohioans living near data centers would not pay electricity bills at all; in Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced in April that PECO had withdrawn a proposed rate increase at his demand, a move he said would cut future bills by as much as $34 a month.

The industry is feeling the pressure in the markets as well as at the polls. Utilities are on track to match last year's record $31 billion in rate-increase requests, a PowerLines survey showed, and investor-owned companies are expected to carry out nearly $1.3 trillion in capital spending over the next five years, according to S&P Global's Regulatory Research Associates analysis cited by Reuters. Fitch downgraded the North American utility sector to deteriorating from neutral in June, citing midterm political pressure to limit bills and profits; Drew Maloney of the Edison Electric Institute told Reuters the grid requires consistent investment every year and does not operate on the political calendar. Texas elects no utility commissioners — its Public Utility Commission is appointed — so the Texas stake in this fight runs through the governor's race and through the data-center growth already reshaping the state's own grid debates.