Utilities and the AI Power Crunch
AI data centers are pushing PJM capacity auction prices from $28.92/MW-day to $333.44/MW-day — Monitoring Analytics attributes 63% of that increase to data-center load (context, cited below; not computed from this site's data). Below: every state's residential electricity price and year-over-year change from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the counties whose economies are most concentrated in utilities (NAICS 22), and the public utilities companies serving them — all computed live from our own data.
Residential electricity prices, by state
Latest available monthly reading (EIA retail-sales), with year-over-year change. States marked AI-DC are the four most publicly associated with hyperscale/AI data-center demand growth (Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Arizona) — a fixed editorial list, not a computed ranking. The dashed line marks the 51-state average.
Price by sector, national average
Latest available reading, averaged across every state that reports it — utility economics span more than the residential rate above.
Where the electricity comes from
National net generation by fuel, latest year (EIA electric-power-operational-data), the grid that new AI/data-center demand is landing on. Total: 4,275,202 thousand MWh.
Power-plant counties: utilities' share of county GDP, 2023
Every county with at least $500.0M in total GDP, ranked by the share from NAICS 22 (Utilities). Tap a county for its full place page.
| Rank | County | Utilities GDP share | Utilities GDP | Total GDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Surry, VA US-51181 | 87.1% | $1.5B | $1.7B |
| 2 | Heard, GA US-13149 | 79.7% | $1.4B | $1.7B |
| 3 | Trimble, KY US-21223 | 76.7% | $502.0M | $654.2M |
| 4 | Claiborne, MS US-28021 | 74.5% | $699.3M | $938.5M |
| 5 | Somervell, TX US-48425 | 72.4% | $1.3B | $1.7B |
| 6 | Sherman, OR US-41055 | 72.0% | $560.0M | $777.4M |
| 7 | Coffey, KS US-20031 | 65.6% | $652.9M | $995.6M |
| 8 | Burke, GA US-13033 | 64.3% | $2.2B | $3.5B |
| 9 | Emery, UT US-49015 | 61.6% | $885.1M | $1.4B |
| 10 | Appling, GA US-13001 | 60.0% | $1.4B | $2.3B |
| 11 | Newton, TX US-48351 | 59.9% | $364.2M | $607.7M |
| 12 | Salem, NJ US-34033 | 57.9% | $4.1B | $7.1B |
| 13 | Brunswick, VA US-51025 | 57.8% | $588.9M | $1.0B |
| 14 | Stewart, TN US-47161 | 57.7% | $618.8M | $1.1B |
| 15 | Nemaha, NE US-31127 | 57.5% | $662.0M | $1.2B |
| 16 | Gallia, OH US-39053 | 57.3% | $1.5B | $2.6B |
| 17 | Choctaw, MS US-28019 | 55.8% | $479.9M | $859.5M |
| 18 | Louisa, VA US-51109 | 54.9% | $1.7B | $3.2B |
| 19 | Oswego, NY US-36075 | 51.9% | $4.7B | $9.0B |
| 20 | Pike, IN US-18125 | 51.8% | $388.9M | $750.1M |
| 21 | De Witt, IL US-17039 | 51.2% | $834.7M | $1.6B |
| 22 | Matagorda, TX US-48321 | 50.9% | $1.5B | $3.0B |
| 23 | Linn, KS US-20107 | 50.6% | $342.3M | $676.1M |
| 24 | Greensville + Emporia, VA* US-51923 | 49.7% | $1.0B | $2.0B |
| 25 | Rhea, TN US-47143 | 48.8% | $1.4B | $2.9B |
Utilities companies, by market cap
Top 15 of 173 public utilities companies we track. Tap a company for its full page.
| Rank | Company | Industry | Market cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GE Vernova Inc. GEV | Renewable Utilities | $268.1B |
| 2 | NextEra Energy, Inc. NEE | Regulated Electric | $180.5B |
| 3 | The Southern Company SOMN * | Regulated Electric | $107.7B |
| 4 | Constellation Energy Corporation CEG | Independent Power Producers | $98.3B |
| 5 | Duke Energy Corporation DUK | Regulated Electric | $96.9B |
| 6 | American Electric Power Company, Inc. AEP | Regulated Electric | $69.9B |
| 7 | Dominion Energy, Inc. D | Regulated Electric | $60.5B |
| 8 | Southern California Gas Company PFD SER A 6% SOCGP | Diversified Utilities | $59.6B |
| 9 | Sempra SRE | Diversified Utilities | $57.3B |
| 10 | Vistra Corp. VST | Independent Power Producers | $52.6B |
| 11 | Entergy Corporation ETR | Regulated Electric | $50.4B |
| 12 | Entergy Louisiana, LLC COLLATERAL TR MT ELC | Regulated Electric | $50.4B |
| 13 | Xcel Energy Inc. XEL | Regulated Electric | $48.5B |
| 14 | Exelon Corporation EXC | Regulated Electric | $47.0B |
| 15 | PG&E Corporation PCG | Regulated Electric | $46.7B |
Industry mix, by market cap
How this was computed
- State prices: EIA retail-sales, the latest available monthly reading per state (electricity_price_res_latest), with year-over-year change computed from the same reading one year prior (electricity_price_res_yoy). US average is the simple (unweighted) mean across the 51 states/DC with a usable reading — not population-weighted.
- Generation mix: national net generation by fuel (EIA electric-power-operational-data), summed across every state at each fuel's latest reporting year. Share of total uses EIA's own reported total, not a re-sum of the fuel breakdowns (a small residual is excluded from the breakdown but not the total — see the CSV/JSON export's methodology block).
- Power-plant counties: BEA CAGDP2 nominal county GDP, NAICS 22 (Utilities) divided by all-industries GDP, 2023, among counties with at least $500.0M total GDP — same eligibility-floor convention as the site's other NAICS-share reports.
- Utilities companies: every public company with sector='Utilities' in our data, ranked by market cap. Industry mix sums market cap within each NAICS-adjacent industry classification.
Context: the PJM power crunch
The following stats are EDITORIAL CONTEXT, cited to their sources — they are NOT computed from Economic Atlas data and do not appear anywhere else on this page or in the CSV/JSON export.
PJM (the grid operator for 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwest states plus DC) has seen its capacity auction clearing price rise from $28.92/MW-day in the 2024/25 auction to $333.44/MW-day — a record high — in the 2027/28 auction. Monitoring Analytics, PJM's Independent Market Monitor, attributes 63% of that cost increase to data-center load. PJM's wholesale power price was up 76% year-over-year in Q1 2026 ($136.53/MWh vs. $77.78/MWh in Q1 2025).
PJM's own 2025 Long-Term Load Forecast projects 32 GW of peak load growth from 2024 to 2030, with data centers accounting for 94% of that increase.
Sources: IEEFA — "Projected data center growth spurs PJM capacity prices by factor of 10"; Utility Dive, reporting Monitoring Analytics figures — "PJM capacity prices hit record high as grid operator falls short of reliability target"; E&E News (POLITICO) — "Data centers drive 76% surge in PJM power prices".
Coverage and limitations
Electricity prices cover the 50 states plus DC (EIA's retail-sales route does not report Puerto Rico under this facet). "Latest available" is a single monthly reading, not an annual average — EIA lags wall-clock time by roughly two to three months.
The data-center-demand state list (Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Arizona) is an editorial judgment based on public reporting, not a metric this site computes from utility interconnection queues or load data — no such dataset is ingested here.
The utilities company table renders tickers as stored in our data. One known issue is disclosed inline above (see the * note). A supervised fix exists (scripts/fix-ticker-somn.js) but has not been run against production.
Frequently asked questions
Hawaii, at 52.7¢/kWh per kWh — the latest available EIA reading, +28.7% YoY year-over-year.
PJM's capacity auction price has risen from $28.92/MW-day to $333.44/MW-day, with Monitoring Analytics attributing 63% of the increase to data-center load — a cited external figure, not computed from this site's own data (see sources in the methodology card above).
PJM's own 2025 Long-Term Load Forecast projects 32 GW of peak load growth from 2024 to 2030, 94% of it from data centers — again, a cited external forecast, not an Economic Atlas figure.
Surry, VA — 87.1% of its $1.7B county GDP came from NAICS 22 (Utilities) in 2023, typically a county anchored by one or more power plants.
Related: The most oil-dependent counties in America, where energy companies are headquartered, and the uranium renaissance report — or see every public Utilities-sector company, or browse the full Reports index.