Western Pennsylvania is on the verge of its biggest infrastructure wave since steel. Data center developers have announced billions of dollars in investments in Springdale, Homer City, Shippingport and Upper Burrell. At full build-out, the facilities planned for just three of those sites would consume enough electricity to power nearly all of the 5.8 million homes in the state.
One of the areas I study is how individual households experience energy costs. My research group at Carnegie Mellon University has spent years analyzing utility billing data to identify the families most likely to fall behind on their electric bills. And the question I keep coming back to, as we head into summer, is one that almost nobody in the data center planning process is asking: What happens when these massive new facilities and millions of households all need large amounts of electricity at the same time?
The servers inside a data center generate enormous heat, and cooling systems run nonstop to manage it. Federal energy researchers estimate that cooling alone accounts for 30% to 40% of a data center’s total electricity use. That demand is substantial on a mild spring day. During a heat wave, when outside air temperatures force cooling systems to work harder, it climbs at the exact moment families across the region are pushing their air conditioning to the limit. Both are drawing from the same grid, and that grid is already under tremendous pressure.
PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator for Pennsylvania and 12 other states, saw capacity prices jump nearly tenfold between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 delivery years. The region’s independent market monitor found that data center demand drove roughly two-thirds of that increase, adding an estimated $9.3 billion in costs that flow directly into household electric bills. Families in states served by PJM have seen rate increases of 10% to 20%. In parts of western Maryland, the added monthly cost is about $18 per household. In Ohio, around $16.
These increases hit before Western Pennsylvania’s data center buildout had begun in earnest. Summer is when the situation will undoubtedly get worse.
Last December in Springdale, residents packed a borough council meeting to oppose a 565,000-square-foot data center on the former Cheswick power plant site. The facility would draw up to 180 megawatts, enough to power 150,000 homes. Council approved it 5 to 2, not because members wanted the project, but because their attorneys warned that state law required approval. The No. 1 concern residents raised was rising electricity costs.
That concern is well-founded, and yet in most data center approvals across the state, one figure is nowhere to be found: the projected impact on monthly bills for nearby households. We can measure megawatt demand and model grid load, but we almost never calculate how a proposed project will change the cost of electricity for the people who already live in the surrounding territory.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has said he supports data centers locating in Pennsylvania, provided they bring their own power or cover the additional strain they place on the grid. That’s a reasonable starting point, but I’d go further: Before a project is approved, require a household-level cost analysis for the surrounding area.
This summer, the families running their air conditioners and the data centers cooling their servers will be competing for the same limited supply of electricity. The math on what that costs ordinary households is not difficult to do. We should be doing it before the next project gets a green light, not after the bills arrive.