Electric Bills Keep Rising. Are These Regulators Protecting You?
State public utility commissions are considering rate hikes that could cost ratepayers billions. The AI data center boom is partly to blame.
Electric bills keep going up—seemingly with no limit in sight. New federal research suggests that residential rates across the U.S. rose, on average, 10.2 percent between March 2025 and March 2026, and some states saw much bigger jumps. These spikes have put many people in the impossible situation of deciding whether to pay to keep their lights on or to pay for other essentials like food, medicine, and transportation. Billions of dollars in additional increases could be on the way. And it’s happening while many utility companies are posting massive profits.
Increased energy demand due to the AI data center boom is one factor driving electric companies to push for rate hikes; others include the costs to update aging electrical grids, to increase resiliency to weather events, and to keep up with rising fuel prices.
But utilities can’t just raise prices on their own—they must seek approval from public utility commissions, or PUCs. These state regulators have tremendous power, not only overseeing what customers pay for electricity, gas, water, and other necessities but also, in some cases, approving infrastructure changes like the building of new power plants.
What Are Public Utility Commissions?
Public utility commissions regulate for-profit monopoly utilities—companies that are the only source of a utility service in an area—to ensure consumers are charged fair, reasonable rates. PUCs also make important decisions about fossil fuel and renewable power projects, infrastructure like electric transmission lines, energy-efficiency programs for ratepayers, and more. So while public service commissions regulate what consumers pay, they’re also required to ensure safe and reliable service.
Balancing those two mandates is becoming difficult.
Utilities requested a record $31 billion in increases in 2025, double 2024’s amount, according to an analysis by PowerLines, a nonprofit organization—and more requests are in the pipeline.
We have real concerns, we have real questions to ask, because people are already in an affordability crisis and a reliability crisis.
These hearings include an opportunity for the public to offer comments on the case.
“More and more we’re seeing people get involved in this electricity space and the utility conversation because they are living an experience where they have to be,” says Alaina DiLaura, Louisiana Public Service Commission policy coordinator for the nonprofit Alliance for Affordable Energy. “We have real concerns, we have real questions to ask, because people are already in an affordability crisis and a reliability crisis.”
While utility regulators in states like Oregon, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have recently introduced measures to help shield ratepayers from data centers’ costs, state commissioners are also pushing through approvals for rate increases and new fossil-fueled power plants.
Here are recent and current public utility commission cases—in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Louisiana—that have big implications for their states’ residents.
North Carolina's Duke Energy Asks for Higher Rates—and Profits
Duke Energy has proposed a multistep, 18 percent residential rate hike to the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC), the state’s PUC.
If approved, rates at Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress, the company’s two North Carolina utilities, will jump by 12 to 14 percent in January 2027 and shoot up by an additional 4 percent in 2028. That will increase a typical bill by up to $30 per month, the utility says. (In early May, the NCUC approved a merger of the two utilities, a shift that Duke Energy claims will save its customers $2.3 billion between 2027 and 2040. But critics worry the merger will only strengthen the utility’s monopoly power.)
The rate increases would help Duke Energy “improve reliability, strengthen the grid against outages from storms, and support North Carolina’s growth,” company spokesperson Jeff Brooks told CR in an email. “We are sensitive to the financial pressures our customers face and know there is never a good time to request a rate review." Ultimately, he continued, state regulators “have the final say on what customers pay.”
The NCUC has been holding public hearings across the state this spring. The final public meeting for customers of Duke Energy Carolinas to comment was originally scheduled for May 12 but will now be held on June 3. The commission will begin evidentiary hearings this summer before making a final decision in late 2026.
North Carolina residents are already facing an energy affordability crisis, and a growing number of households have had their electricity shut off after failing to keep up with their bills.
“I spend a lot of my time [worrying] about every bill that I receive. I cannot stretch my money any further.”
In 2024, federal data show, roughly 402,000 households in the state had their electricity disconnected. (California, a state with nearly four times North Carolina’s population, saw about 473,000 disconnections.) And, in March 2026 alone, Duke Energy’s two utilities sent disconnection notices to more than 382,000 customers. That’s more than double the nearly 160,000 notices it sent the previous March, according to reports filed with the NCUC.
During an April 7 NCUC hearing, Duke Energy Carolinas customers testified that they were forced to choose between paying for electricity or for other essentials, like groceries, healthcare, and transportation. Rick Martin, a retired mechanic on a fixed income, said at the hearing that the cost of living has become unsustainable. “I spend a lot of my time [worrying] about every bill that I receive. I cannot stretch my money any further,” he said, noting that the rate increase would force him to cut back on either food or medicine. “For a company that makes billions, 15 percent doesn’t mean much, but to retirees it’s life-changing.”
Duke Energy’s proposed rate hike for residential customers comes at a time when the Fortune 150 company posted close to $5 billion in profits. While the NCUC considers the rate hike, it is also weighing the utility’s proposal for an increase to its allowed return on equity to nearly 11 percent, which would raise profit margins for its shareholders.
These requests also come amid a surge of data centers that tech companies want to develop in the state. Brooks said data centers “are not a significant factor” in the utility’s rate increase request, but both Google and Microsoft have petitioned to intervene in the case, citing the importance of available and reliable energy for their data center operations in North Carolina.
Consumer Reports advocates are inviting the public to join a petition that calls on the North Carolina Utilities Commission to oppose the rate hike.
Duke Energy customers can submit comments to the North Carolina Utilities Commission. The Duke Energy Carolinas case is Docket E-7 Sub 1329; the Duke Energy Progress case is Docket E-2 Sub 1380. The final public comment hearing for Duke Energy Carolinas will be held on June 3 at 7:00 p.m. at the Durham County Courthouse.
Georgia Electric Rates Rise, Amid Massive Power Plant Buildout
Last December, the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) approved a request from the state’s largest utility, Georgia Power: a massive $16 billion plan that includes the construction of five new gas power plants. The project would add nearly 10 gigawatts of new energy production—the equivalent of five Hoover Dams—which is enough electricity to power 8.3 million homes, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC).
Georgia is a hot spot for data center development, and the utility says 80 percent of this new energy will power such facilities.
In March, environmental and faith organizations appealed the December GPSC decision, stating that the “Commission exceeded its statutory authority when it failed to follow the law’s protections against a monopoly utility’s unnecessary and uneconomic investments that will be charged to captive customers, and it clearly erred by certifying far more investments than necessary.”
Consumer advocates say many of the data centers the state is anticipating may never get built. But existing customers could still be on the hook for up to $60 billion, the lifetime cost of the new plants, according to the petition for review. “Georgians will remember this moment, especially if we’re forced to pay for dirty gas plants built for data centers that never materialize,” Codi Norred, executive director of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light, a nonprofit group, said in a statement after the GPSC’s decision.
Joshua Peacock, a spokesperson for Georgia Power, told CR in early May that “growth is materializing, it is not speculative.” He reported that “as of this month, 32 large-load customers have committed to receiving approximately 15,600 MW of electric service with 21 projects under construction.”
The Commission says in a March 2026 fact sheet that, “in the unlikely event” contracts are not solidified by the end of 2026 for the nearly 10 GW of new power it approved in December, the GPSC “will have five years to implement several remediating actions to prevent costs from affecting current ratepayers over the long term.” That could include suspending not-yet-started projects and shuttering other plants.
Photo: NRC Wikipedia Photo: NRC Wikipedia
Georgia Power has raised prices six times since 2023, increasing residential bills an average total of $43 per month, SELC calculates. These hikes have come in the form of three GSPC-approved rate increases and three additional increases tied to rising fuel costs and the construction of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle—a project that cost $36.8 billion, more than double its original budget, and took seven years longer than anticipated to come online, according to a May 2024 report by advocacy groups.
So while the December energy expansion decision included a three-year freeze on what customers pay for every kilowatt-hour of energy they use, customers could still see price hikes stemming from fuel costs and storm damage.
“People in Georgia are paying utility bills that are like car payments” in size, Georgia public service commissioner Alicia Johnson, who took office in January, told CR. “They need to understand why that has happened and that they have a say in how they want utilities to be regulated.”
The Georgia Public Service Commission website provides information on upcoming public hearings. It also has a form for submitting public comments.
Arizona Regulators Considering Big Rate Hikes for Two Utilities
About 2 million households in the Phoenix and Tucson areas are facing 13 to 14 percent rate increase proposals by their utilities, Arizona Public Service (APS) and Tucson Electric Power Company (TEP).
APS says inflation and rising expenses are driving its proposed rate hike, adding in a press release earlier this week that the utility is “anticipating unprecedented growth” in the area it services and is “making sure new large energy users, like data centers, continue to pay their full cost of service.” Rising costs also factor into TEP’s request: The utility’s website says it needs to raise rates “to start recovering $1.7 billion of recent investments in our local energy grid and passing along the higher costs we’ve been paying to reliably serve our community’s expanding energy needs.”
The state’s PUC, called the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), heard public comments related to the TEP case at meetings in March and April, and started evidentiary hearings on April 22. The fifth, and final, public comment meeting for the APS request was held on May 18, and the evidentiary hearing began later that day. The ACC says it will issue decisions on both cases in late 2026.
This is TEP’s third rate hike request in five years: The ACC approved a 6 percent increase in 2021 and an additional 10 percent jump to rates just two years later, according to Arizona’s attorney general Kris Mayes, a member of the ACC from 2003 to 2010. Mayes formally intervened in the current rate case in September, calling it an example of “blatant corporate greed” and writing, “We’re watching a monopoly utility try to abuse the system.”
However, the company counters that customers’ electric bills declined in 2024 and 2025 due to reduced costs. TEP’s “average monthly residential bill fell from about $146 in 2024 to $140 last year, a drop of about 4 percent,” company spokesperson Joseph Barrios said in an email. “The increase we’ve proposed is less than the level of inflation since 2021 and would still leave our bills well below the national average.”
TEP estimated last month that its proposed percent rate hike would add $14 per month to the average residential customer’s bill. Some of the utility’s customers have said they can’t afford that. “My family is already struggling to keep up with basic living expenses,” one resident shared in a written public comment. “This increase would create serious financial hardship. I have a special needs daughter who depends on a stable home environment, and electricity is essential for her health and safety.”
Other commenters stressed the importance of air conditioning in Tucson’s hot climate and said their electricity bills already reached into the hundreds of dollars.
Lee Ziesche, an organizer with No Desert Data Center Coalition, a community advocacy group, attended the ACC public hearing on April 22, Earth Day. “There was a woman who was crying because she’s just so worried about paying her bills,” Ziesche said in an interview. “It was story after story of people who don’t know how they’re going to pay rent, TEP bills, grocery bills, gas, and their healthcare.”
Photo: Getty Images Photo: Getty Images
Tucson Electric Power is owned by Fortis, a Canadian gas and electric utility that posted roughly $1.8 billion CAN in profits in 2024. In February, Mayes, the attorney general, submitted expert testimony to the ACC, an analysis that revealed the current rate hike would result in $148 million going to TEP shareholders, and offered an alternate proposal of a 4 percent increase.
While the rate hike case plays out, some advocates in Tucson are pushing to form a public power utility that would replace TEP altogether. “We gained a lot of support in the last year when people saw whose side TEP was on,” says Ziesche, who is part of the effort. “Whenever there were these big public meetings with the data center developers, TEP was always sitting right next to them.”
In early December, the Arizona Corporation Commission approved a special energy supply agreement between TEP and Project Blue, a controversial $3.6 billion data center planned close to the Pima County Fairgrounds, just southeast of Tucson. Project Blue construction began last month, and the facility could be operational sometime next year.
Barrios, the TEP spokesperson, said by email that Project Blue had no effect on the current rate hike proposal, which is based on historical costs. Additionally, he said, "TEP has received regulatory approval for an agreement that will protect customers from costs associated with serving Project Blue."
Customers of TEP and APS can share written public comments on these rate increase proposals on the Arizona Corporation Commission website. The TEP case is Docket E-01933A-25-0103, and the APS case is Docket E-01345A-25-0105.
Entergy Louisiana Plans Massive Power Plants for Meta AI Facilities
Construction is underway on Meta’s Hyperion data center in Richland Parish, La.—a facility that will demand up to three times as much electricity as the city of New Orleans, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
The company now has plans for a massive expansion, a second data center adjacent to Hyperion. To meet the new facility’s projected energy demand, the utility, Entergy Louisiana, asked the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) in March to approve the construction of seven new gas plants.
The commissioners voted 4-1 to fast-track that approval process, following a new “lightning initiative” for considering projects serving companies with huge electricity demands, such as hyperscale data centers. (At a December 2025 meeting of the LPSC, commissioner Jean-Paul Coussan said the initiative follows a statewide directive “to accelerate the timelines required for major employers to invest, build, and grow in Louisiana.“) The LPSC says it will make a decision on the utility’s proposal for the seven new plants by the end of the year.
Before the vote, commissioner Eric Skrmetta said that the Commission could “easily move this matter through within eight months" and that he thinks “the public will be easily protected on this." He didn’t respond to CR’s request for comment.
But advocates like DiLaura called the rush request “premature,” testifying during that April LPSC hearing that “the 1,200-page application alone requires significant time to review and analyze. Entergy’s asking the Commission to say upfront that there won’t be any scrutiny or independent consideration on the record of the most transformational proposal that the Commission has ever seen.” DiLaura argued that the LPSC should take the time to get an independent review from an administrative law judge, a step she said would be skipped in the new, fast-tracked process.
The request came less than a year after the LPSC greenlit Entergy’s multibillion-dollar proposal for three new gas plants to help power Hyperion in August 2025. At the time, Phillip May, Entergy Louisiana’s CEO, published a statement calling Meta’s move to Louisiana “a game-changer for our state” and “a big win for our customers.” CR reached out to the company for comment but did not receive a response.
Consumer advocates argue that Entergy Louisiana’s ratepayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for these new power plants and their related infrastructure. Louisiana is already heavily invested in gas-fired power: As of 2025, natural gas fueled around 72 percent of the state’s electricity generation, far more than the country’s overall figure of roughly 41 percent, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Customers already saw big electric bill spikes last year, and if natural gas prices remain elevated, electricity costs could increase further as these new plants begin to come online in 2028.
Advocates also criticize the regulators fast-tracking the processes for these requests.
“It’s difficult to make sense of the Commission’s decision to rush a vote on a hotly contested issue that will affect so many people’s lives and wallets,” Paul Arbaje, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement after the August decision.
“Louisianans have yet to get answers from the Commission on how sharply energy bills will rise and how the electricity grid will handle such a massive new draw on the system," Arbaje said in the statement. "Unlike the Commission, Entergy and Meta have no mandate to protect Louisiana ratepayers.”
The Louisiana Public Service Commission receives public comments during monthly Business and Executive Sessions, if an open docket is on the agenda. The LPSC website has instructions on how to submit a public comment to be read at the meeting. You can also email or call Commissioners. The current Entergy proposal is Docket U-37882.
This work is made possible, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Energy Foundation. CR’s work on energy affordability is also made possible by the vision and support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
