By Shanelle Kaul
April 25, 2026 / 8:01 PM EDT / CBS News
Atlanta — On a sunny afternoon outside, Carolyn Kayne’s 3,000-square-foot house feels frigid inside. Kayne says she walks through her home bundled in a ski suit to stay warm. Her electric bills have nearly doubled over two years; she’s shut off heat and hot water and now lives in a small apartment in the back of the house to try to cut costs.
Patty Durand, founder of the nonprofit Georgians for Affordable Energy, says Kayne’s situation is far from isolated. “The average bill for an average customer used to be about $150 a month,” Durand said. “The average bill now is $225.”
A CBS News analysis found that Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, has sought six rate increases in the last three years — a span that saw the Vogtle nuclear plant come online and a rapid expansion of data centers across Georgia. Many of those facilities negotiated discounted power deals, Durand said.
The recent surge in artificial intelligence applications has driven demand for more and bigger data centers. Nationally, new data center development is contributing to higher utility bills in at least 13 states, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. A 2025 Bloomberg review found that Americans living near data centers have seen monthly energy costs rise by as much as 267% compared with five years earlier.
In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have made the state the first to bar construction of new data centers, saying officials need more time to “examine and plan for the potential impacts of large-scale data centers” as AI use grows.
Durand warns that without stronger safeguards, data centers could add billions of dollars to Georgia’s electricity rates. Georgia Power says it put a rate freeze in place within the past year and plans to use revenue from large customers, including data centers, to help reduce residential bills. The utility rejects claims that it is shifting data-center costs onto other customers. “There is no risk that residential customers will end up paying for the costs of this large growth, including data centers,” Aaron Mitchell, senior vice president for strategic growth at Georgia Power, said.
For homeowners like Kayne, those assurances provide little comfort. Faced with bills she can’t afford, she said, “I guess maybe it is time, you know, to give up my home.”