The prevailing narrative around data centers, that they’re power-hungry monsters driving up everyone’s electricity bill, is running into a wall of inconvenient data. Multiple recent studies have concluded there is no significant connection between data center growth and rising electricity prices in the US. In some cases, the opposite appears to be true.
The numbers tell a different story
The Institute for Energy Research published an analysis showing that the ten states with the highest number of data centers averaged electricity prices of 14.46 cents per kWh. States without major data center concentrations? They averaged 14.39 cents per kWh.
The Pearson correlation coefficient came in at -0.053, which is about as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero. In plain English: knowing how many data centers a state has tells you almost nothing about what its residents pay for power.
The Center for Jobs took it a step further with a regression analysis. Their finding was that states where data centers consume a higher share of total electricity actually tend to have rates about 1.1 cents per kWh lower than peers. Not higher. Lower.
