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BY Adele Peters

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One of the biggest reasons most Americans don’t want a data center built nearby is that they worry it will drive up their utility bills. But whether those bills rise, and by how much, depends on the local power grid and the terms of the deal.

In fact, the impacts have at times been counterintuitive, with new data centers in some cases actually driving down utility bills for other customers on the same grid.

Consider North Dakota. A 2025 study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Brattle Group found that increased electricity demand from large customers, including data centers, helped lower bills in the state between 2019 and 2024. That’s partly because North Dakota had a relatively abundant supply of electricity, including wind power, and didn’t necessarily need to build new infrastructure to accommodate the additional demand.…