The Real Reason Your Power Bill Doubled (um, AI Data Centers)

We spent $327 for electricity. That’s crazy.

Our bill was $370.59, right? What the fudge is all this? A power plant. Other search charges.

This is crazy. I don’t know how people are going to survive this. It’s going up to 11% now. 11%. Almost 88,000 people’s electric has been shut off due to this. Do you live in Augusta? Did your power bill look like a car note last month? Because it’s not some of us, it’s all of us. Your electricity bill went up 30% last year. And it’s not just inflation. AI data centers caused $9.3 billion in increased costs. You’re literally paying for big tech’s electricity.

These data centers are popping up everywhere. They’re being built in almost every state. Virginia has over 600 data centers. It is the data center capital of the world. There’s probably a data center closer to you than you realize and more are being built every day. But here’s what made me suspicious. If these companies are worth trillions of dollars, then why do politicians celebrate them like they won the lottery? I found the answer in tax documents.

Data centers aren’t just being built with big tech money. They’re being built with the help of your tax dollars. In November of last year, it was discovered that Leley LLC, a newly created Delaware Shell Company, applied for a 401 water quality certification for a proposed project by the name of Project Sucra. Lately, LLC turned out to be none other than Meta.

We just announced that we’re building a 2 gigawatt plus data center in Louisiana that we’re going to use to train future versions of Llama. Uh, we were in this for the long term and we are committed to building the most advanced AI in the world.

Meta is now building a $10 billion facility in Louisiana. This thing is massive at 2,250 acres. That’s bigger than 1,700 American football fields. The state gave them tax breaks so massive they keep the exact amount confidential, but we know it was upwards of $1 billion. Meta claims this will create 500 permanent jobs. But we know based on previously built data centers that the real number is somewhere around 50 jobs. That’s $20 million in tax breaks per job created. $20 million.

Well, whether it’s 500 jobs, I’ll take it here. Five jobs in this area was a big thing before this came here in Louisiana. We’ll take every job that we can. When you add the 500 jobs plus the 5,000 construction jobs, it starts to build out. Remember Jesus started with 12 and look how big his church is. But let’s look at some of these jobs. The governor is referring to data center design, engineering, and construction—remote. Capacity planning director—remote. Principal energy strategy—remote. All of these high-paying jobs are for remote workers. And we know the bulk of job creation comes from the development of the data center. But even then it may not be done by local crews. So what are the jobs being left to the locals? Security guard. But even security guards are increasingly being replaced by AI powered security cameras.

Remember when your power went out last summer? Here’s why.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the regulatory authority that monitors the entire US continental power grid, including parts of Canada and Mexico, issued a warning. Our grid is becoming alarmingly unreliable. This isn’t some local utility company. This is the federal authority responsible for ensuring that power companies from coast to coast keep the lights on.

And the costs are exploding. PJM, the organization that coordinates wholesale electricity for 67 million Americans, just held their annual auction. The price tag—$16.1 billion. That’s up from $2.2 billion from just 2 years ago, a 700% increase. PJM claims it’s a relatively small part of your electric bill, but that’s easy for them to say when they’re not the ones footing the bill.

Demand for power is growing at a pace I have not seen in my 45-year energy career. This was reinforced just last week with PJM capacity prices clearing above the $325 per megawatt day price cap. As we continue to see the need for capacity and energy materially rise with generation requirements increasing to support capacity, this gives us confidence in our growing capital plan.

This increase is largely due to new data centers and other industrial customers coming online in Indiana, Ohio, and Texas, resulting in a roughly $200 million year-over-year increase in revenues.

They’re now starting to upgrade the power grid, but not for us—for the data centers. And they’re passing the cost on to us.

In just the first half of 2025, energy companies across the US got approved for $29 billion in rate increases—a staggering 142% increase from the same time last year. Florida Power and Light alone wants $9.8 billion more over four years.

Not Georgia Power pulling up to change the meter because everybody’s light bill has been abnormally high and she’s out there changing the meter. I’ve been calling them for months. They just changed this meter over here and told me that everybody had been complaining about their electrical bill being super high—700, 1,200. I called Georgia Power months ago. I let them know it’s abnormally high. It’s only two people in here. My light bill should not be $600, $700, $800. That’s absolutely ridiculous. And they were saying it goes based on your usage. It goes based on my daily usage. I understand that, but it’s only two people in here. I only have a two-bedroom townhouse.

So, let me get this straight. The current power grid is under stress. It has rolling blackouts across the US. It can’t support our current needs. Yet, we’re going to pay billions of dollars so that data centers can use even more electricity.

Look at where they’re building these things—Arizona, Texas, Nevada—some of the driest states in America. Data centers are 24/7 operation, and they have to keep the servers cool and that takes a lot of power, a lot of air conditioning to do so.

Do we have the resources? Do we have the electric capacity, the water capacity to continue to grow this business in Arizona? Is it sustainable? Not at the moment.

They’re putting the thirstiest buildings in the country in the desert. It doesn’t seem logical, right? Well, it’s because it is in fact the desert. Corporations can buy massive plots of land at low cost and receive big tax breaks from local officials. Electricity is cheaper. There’s less regulation, fewer natural disasters like hurricanes, and there’s proximity to California.

San Antonio’s two data centers drank 463 million gallons of water in the last 2 years alone. Meanwhile, the city has been in a drought. Residents could only water lawns once a week. A paper submitted to the Texas Water Development Board projected that data centers in the state will consume 49 billion gallons of water in 2025. That number is expected to rise to 399 billion gallons of water by 2030.

But what happened in Tucson shows just how far they’ll go. City officials in Tucson signed a non-disclosure agreement for a vague project referred to as Project Blue. City officials serving the public but hiding what’s going on in their city. A document about the development of Project Blue was obtained through public records. The company behind Project Blue—none other than Amazon. They wanted 290 acres to build three massive buildings. And the worst part, they wanted to use drinking water to cool the data center in Arizona in the middle of a drought.

However, the people fought back and the city council voted unanimously no.

“I, item passes. Thank you all. [Applause] Thank you very much.”

But Amazon won’t give up. They will just go to the next town over and the next and the next until someone says yes. And this is happening everywhere.

In Wyoming, there’s a massive data center being built that will use five times more power than all humans in the entire state. Let me say that part again: five times more electricity than every home, every business, every person in Wyoming combined. It could consume twice as much electricity as the entire state currently produces. And yet, no one knows who’s using it. The development company Crusoe will not confirm nor deny if it is part of OpenAI’s Stargate project. But we know that Crusoe is behind the development of OpenAI’s Texas data center.

Virginia gave away $730 million in tax exemptions to data centers last year. Which companies got the money? They won’t tell you. The state handed out three-quarters of a billion dollars with zero transparency.

The worst part, Virginia generated 48 cents in new state revenue for every dollar it did not collect in sales tax. Meaning for every tax dollar that Virginia gives to these major corporations, they lose 52 cents per dollar. But if these multi-billion dollar companies are receiving all of these tax exemptions, who do we think is going to make up the difference for this 52? Virginians. They’re going to pass on the tax burden to the locals to make up on this tax budget.

What Virginia did is technically legal, but what I found in Oregon is criminal. Four Morrow County officials got caught red-handed. They voted to give Amazon massive tax breaks. What Amazon did or didn’t know was that officials owned 20% stakes in Windwave Communications, a fiber company that, surprise, surprise, was contracted with Amazon to lay fiber for Amazon’s data center. These local officials who are supposed to be voting in favor of the public voted in favor of enriching themselves. Now, they were fined $2,000 per person. $2,000.

Georgia legislators are getting soaked with money from Georgia Powers of interest.

Absolutely. It is clearly corrupting. This is the highest paid utility CEOs in the country. Why is the poorest region of the country paying the most to our CEOs? $23 million. $33 million. It’s ridiculous how much money they make.

But the corruption goes deeper. Massive corporations are spending millions on lobbyists. The people who go around whispering in politicians’ ears attempting to get them to create policy changes that benefit tech billionaires. Meta, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, X, and Snapchat spent $61.5 million on lobbying. They employed 300 lobbyists. That’s one lobbyist for every two members of Congress. Imagine someone’s job is going around and trying to convince your representative that major corporations need more tax breaks and that $61.5 million.

That’s just what they have to report. $1.9 billion in dark money flowed through the 2024 election, untraceable, anonymous, and that’s just what researchers could identify. The real number is likely higher.

So, when your local politician all of a sudden supports a data center that nobody wanted, when tax breaks appear out of nowhere, when your governor says data centers are vital for economic growth, check their campaign finances for Big Tech’s fingerprint.

But the sickest part: this corruption has a body count. This is XAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis, the largest AI cluster in the world. Elon Musk’s AI project powering Grok. To meet its massive energy demands, XAI installed 35 methane gas turbines. We went to Memphis and found an environmental crime scene. Musk’s data center burning enough methane to power a small city with no permits and no pollution controls. I have not seen anything like this. We believe they’ve already violated the Clean Air Act.

And it’s not just Memphis. UC Riverside and Caltech researchers found that data centers nationwide have created a staggering $5.4 billion in public health costs.

There’s no sleeping for anybody in the area at night. This noise turns 24/7. So you’re pretty sleep deprived. People have headaches, migraines, dizziness.

You don’t spend any time outside unless you absolutely have to. This is typical water pressure in the kitchen. So you can see the sediment from the data center. Wow. And that’s just from the water coming out of your faucet. Yeah. And this is what’s in our pipes. People are complaining about constant noise, chemical smells, and worsening asthma. And while they keep breathing in these fumes, their electricity bill is on the rise.

Memphis electricity rates went up 4% in 2024, another 4% approved for 2025, and another 4% planned for 2026. And it will only get worse as the development of a second Colossus data center is already underway.

And in Abilene, Texas, where OpenAI is building their $15 billion Stargate project, local officials gave an 85% property tax break. Regular Texans pay an average of 1.81% every year. No exceptions. Between 2019 and 2024, property taxes increased nearly 30% nationwide. The median American now pays $250 a month just in property taxes.

I mean, my electric bill hasn’t been under $200 in months. I can’t even remember. And now it’s property tax time in Connecticut. Our property tax for our home went up $1,000. $1,080, to be exact. I don’t understand it. And that’s on top of the vehicle property taxes that we have to pay.

The data center will create supposedly 357 jobs. Yet, just as we saw with Meta, there’s no requirement that those jobs are local. Data center security technical lead—remote. Enterprise security engineer—remote. Security engineer cloud security—remote. Not even one of the jobs listed on LinkedIn is for Abilene, Texas. Even if all of the 357 jobs were local, that’s still a tiny fraction of jobs compared to the billions in investments and the massive amounts of tax breaks.

Some of these tax breaks have a 10-year window, but the company could go under in 10 years and then the state would never recoup its money. That lost revenue has to be made up. Either schools get less funding, your roads don’t get fixed, or—and this is usually what happens—your taxes go up to pay the difference.

When local officials celebrate landing a data center with massive tax breaks, what they’re really saying is, “We increased your taxes to subsidize a trillion dollar company.”

By 2030, data centers will use triple what they use now. Your bill isn’t going back down. It’s going to double. Water consumption is up 170% all during a drought crisis and those AI jobs they’re supposedly creating.

The government just revised May’s job numbers from 144,000 to 19,000; June from 147,000 to 14,000. They take our tax money to build their data centers to train their AIs that they’re hoping will replace us as workers. We’re effectively funding our own replacement.

Tucson said no to Amazon. Communities are organizing and demanding transparency. Some states are finally proposing laws to protect ratepayers. The powerful only win when we don’t pay attention. When we don’t know what’s happening, they’re counting on us not caring, not understanding, not fighting back. But we can prove them wrong.

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