MIAMI VALLEY — President Donald Trump talked about how much electricity data centers use during his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
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As reported on News Center 7 at 6:00, the president said he wants to make sure the cost of that electricity doesn’t get passed on to Americans or their utility bills.
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Mark Ahrens lives in Shelby County.
Right now, the family home is about two miles from the site of a proposed Amazon data center.
“We’ll be moving here very shortly, and I’ll be within a one-mile radius,” Ahrens said.
He told News Center 7’s I-Team Lead Investigator John Bedell that he’s worried about what the data center could mean for his electric bill.
“It’s a concern. It’s a concern for I think everyone,” he said.
It’s a concern the president is talking about.
“Many Americans are also concerned that energy demand from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills,” Trump said.
During his State of the Union address, he said he’s negotiated what he called a new “Rate Payer Protection Pledge.”
“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. They can build their own plants as part of their factory so that no one’s prices will go up,” Trump said.
This is an issue that’s been on the White House’s radar.
Just last month, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine told the I-Team that he was part of a group of 14 bipartisan governors in the region who traveled to D.C. to meet with the White House Energy Council.
>>PREVIOUS COVERAGE: White House, governors including DeWine, share electricity pricing concerns amid data center growth
“Data centers, we think, are valuable,” DeWine previously said.
The group has expressed concern about how PJM Interconnection prices electricity.
PJM operates the electric grid in the region of the country that includes Ohio.
“But we also know that people are very concerned, as they should be, that what’s happening with the data centers (is) they’re not paying their fair share,” DeWine said.
As the I-Team has previously reported, Ohio is fifth in the country for the number of data centers
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Amazon is behind two of the several proposed data centers in the Miami Valley.
In a statement, Amazon previously told the I-Team:
“We actively work to keep energy costs stable for communities. Rather than increasing costs for local communities, AWS actively works to keep energy rates stable and bring benefits to all energy users.”
The I-Team also reached out to PJM on Wednesday and received the following statement:
“It is clear that electricity demand is increasing driven largely by the proliferation of data centers in our footprint. This is resulting in higher bills for all electricity consumers. PJM’s primary responsibility is to maintain power grid reliability for the 67 million consumers that it serves. As a mission-driven organization that focuses on people, the affordability challenge created by this supply/demand imbalance is concerning to PJM.
PJM has taken action recently to both try and maintain grid reliability while dealing with these affordability concerns. These actions include placing a cap on the existing market price to prevent an increase in wholesale (capacity) prices for the typical consumer through mid-2030. Also, PJM is exploring a plan to procure new supply to cure this supply/demand imbalance, and will look to charge the costs of this procurement to the data centers. This plan is fully in-line with the President’s comments.”
News Center 7 will continue to follow this story.
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