The Price of Power
Remember egg prices in 2025? Eggs became the defining symbol of inflation in America, at least for a brief period of time. Shoppers stared in disbelief at grocery store shelves as the price of a basic carton of eggs doubled or even tripled. Politicians talked about eggs. Cable news talked about eggs. Social media, as only it can do, turned eggs into shorthand for an economy that suddenly felt unaffordable. The causes were relatively straightforward: Avian Flu devastated poultry flocks; supply chains were strained, and costs surged after the outbreak. Eggs represented a moment of chaotic goods inflation. However, by 2026 America’s inflation symbol had changed. The egg crisis was over, and the new emblem of economic anxiety was no longer sitting in the refrigerator. The new potential symbol of ever-increasing costs was arriving every month in the mailbox: The Electricity Bill.
Unlike eggs, electricity is not a temporary supply shock. Rising utility bills reflect something deeper and definitely more structural happening in the United States economy. Across the entire country, households have seen power costs climb in a manner not seen in many years. Increasingly, consumers blame data centers. While there is some legitimacy to that blame, other issues such as aging infrastructure, massive grid upgrades, the need for a new generation fleet, and rising natural gas prices are also real factors.
Electricity has moved from a mundane expense to a hot topic and for some, a central political issue. People are openly asking why their monthly bills are rising while trillion-dollar technology companies are racing to build more energy-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Data centers now consume enormous amounts of electricity, with some individual facilities requiring as much power as entire cities. The emotion involved is understandable. Families can delay vacations or dine out less often, but they cannot just opt out of air conditioning in the dead heat of the summer or heating when it is freezing. Utility bills are certainly less discretionary spending and more like the price of basic existence.
The egg crisis was over, and the new emblem of economic anxiety was no longer sitting in the refrigerator. It was arriving every month in the mailbox: the electricity bill.
While AI has become the visible face of the problem, data centers are not the core cause. Most large loads, no matter if they are AI or some type of manufacturing, are now required to pay for or build their own generation up front, as utilities and especially cooperatives look to protect their everyday members from the increase in electricity demand. Third-party vendors, such as NextEra, have emerged as the developers of power generation for data centers, knowing they can no longer just request power from the local utility.
I am not taking a stance on data centers; I am just saying the real pressure on electricity rates comes from not just shutting down older generation, such as coal facilities, but dismantling the plants entirely, thus removing them as an option when demand soars. To replace the old fleet, many are building gas generation, as it is the quickest to build and most flexible when it comes to ramping production up and down. However, the cost of new gas plants and the electricity they produce is much like egg prices. Just 10 years ago, gas generation was produced at 5 cents per kWh. Today, that price is essentially 10 cents per kWh.
While each utility has varying needs for additional generation, almost every utility is exposed to the cost of the new fleet to some extent. Yellowstone Valley Electric Cooperative (YVEC) is 1 of 139 members of Basin Electric Power Cooperative. They have a remarkably diverse portfolio of generators, which eases some of the exposure; they too are currently building new gas plants, not for data centers, but just to meet the growing demands of their members.
Brandon J. Wittman
Chief Executive Officer