Adjusting for inflation, average US retail electricity prices in 2025 were 3% higher than in 2019, and 29 states saw inflation-adjusted prices fall over that period, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s July 2026 update on retail electricity price trends, written with co-authors from The Brattle Group.
The same update reports that prices rose 2.6% in inflation-adjusted terms from 2024 to 2025, with increases in 43 states and DC, and that capacity costs in the PJM region drove some of the largest recent increases.
Business Pill · Who Pays for the Grid
A short explainer on how grid costs are shared. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss this report.
The key insight: By our arithmetic from Berkeley Lab’s data file, the six states with the fastest load growth from 2019 to 2025 saw inflation-adjusted power prices fall by an average of 11.2%, while the US average rose 3%, according to the report.
In nominal terms, the report says, average all-sector prices rose 29% from 2019 to 2025 and 39% since 2010. In inflation-adjusted terms, 2025 prices were 3% above 2019 and 6% below 2010 (Berkeley Lab publication page).
Residential customers saw larger increases. The report puts nominal residential pricegrowth at 33% from 2019 to 2025, against 26% for commercial and 27% for industrial customers. Adjusted for inflation, national-average residential prices rose 5.6% over the same period.
The report’s state maps show the split. From 2019 to 2025, 29 states had inflation-adjusted decreases, with the largest increases in California, the Northeast and some Mid-Atlantic, Western and Great Lakes states. From 2024 to 2025, 43 states and DC had increases.
Inflation-adjusted all-sector retail electricity prices, 2019 vs 2025, in the six states with the fastest retail-sales growth named by Berkeley Lab, and the US average. Data: Berkeley Lab July 2026 data file; percent changes are our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
Another Data center myth: rising energy cost. More specifically, the idea that data centers are the main reason electricity prices are rising across the US.
The national price data through 2025 do not support data centers as a blanket explanation for rising US power prices.
Inflation-adjusted retail electricity prices across all customer groups were 3% above 2019 levels nationwide and fell in 29 states (Berkeley Lab/Brattle, July 2026).
In the PJM region, however, data centers are contributing to higher costs for securing enough power at peak demand. The independent market monitor estimates that data-center demand added $6.27 billion to capacity-market costs for 2028/29 and $29.4 billion across four auctions (Monitoring Analytics, October 2026). These are modeled wholesale costs. How much reaches households depends on utility contracts and rates.
The impact of data centers on electricity prices varies by region. In some states with substantial data-center growth, inflation-adjusted average prices have fallen.
A post on X by @kimmonismus on 7 November. It cites the Berkeley Lab/Brattle July 2026 figures this piece uses (real prices 3% above 2019, falls in 29 states) and separately cites a PJM market monitor estimate of data center capacity costs, which we have not checked. The post’s characterisations are the poster’s.
Load Growth and Prices
The report finds that electricity demand has started rising faster: retail sales grew 1.1% a year from 2019 to 2025, against 0.2% a year from 2010 to 2019, with commercial and industrial customers accounting for 70% of the growth in terawatt-hours. The fastest growth from 2019 to 2025 was in North Dakota, New Mexico, Nebraska, Virginia, Oregon and Texas.
“From 2019 to 2025, states with the highest growth generally saw average retail prices decline in real terms,” the report states. It adds a note on its chart: “Presence of significant data center load does not appear to alter conclusions.”
The report also cites a late-2024 Berkeley Lab estimate that data centers consumed about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023 and could consume between 6.7% and 12% by 2028.
Where Prices Rose: PJM
The report singles out the PJM region. “Increases in capacity prices in the PJM region in 2025 were a significant contributor to the rise in YoY retail prices in many mid-Atlantic states,” it says, listing 2025 increases of 3.1 cents per kWh in DC, 2.0 in New Jersey and 1.5 in Maryland.
Capacity costs raised average PJM wholesale costs by 0.9 cents per kWh in 2025, with a further 0.6 cents expected in 2026, the report says. Its PJM case study lists data center load growth among several factors behind higher capacity auction prices, alongside summer capacity ratings for gas plants, the demand curve price cap and the adoption of the ELCC method.
“Past need not be prelude,” the report says of the historical relationship between load growth and residential prices, pointing to the PJM case.
Our Numbers
By our arithmetic from the report’s data file, the six states with the fastest load growth from 2019 to 2025 saw inflation-adjusted all-sector prices change by an average of -11.2%: North Dakota -26.2%, Nebraska -16.2%, New Mexico -15.9%, Texas -6.6%, Virginia -5.4% and Oregon +3.3%.
By the same arithmetic, inflation-adjusted prices rose 30.8% in DC and Maine and 29.4% in California over the period, the three largest increases in the data file.
A post on X by @kimmonismus on 7 November, passed to us by a reader, summarised the report’s national and state findings and contrasted them with PJM capacity costs.
The Structural Read
As we read the report, the national number and the PJM number answer different questions: one covers six years across all states, the other covers the 2024-to-2025 increases in PJM states, where the report says capacity prices were a significant contributor.
As we read the state data, the largest real increases since 2019 were in DC, Maine and California, by our arithmetic, places the report does not list among the fastest-growing.
As we read the caveats, the authors say the residential relationship is less clear than the all-sector one and that past patterns may not hold as load growth accelerates.
Berkeley Lab and The Brattle Group, PJM case study, July 2026 data update
“Accelerated load growth combined with supply and delivery constraints leads to significant price increases”
Three Implications
FOR THE DATA CENTER DEBATE The report finds that states with the highest load growth from 2019 to 2025 generally saw average retail prices decline in real terms, and notes that significant data center load does not appear to alter that conclusion.
FOR THE MID-ATLANTIC The report lists 2025 increases of 3.1 cents per kWh in DC, 2.0 in New Jersey and 1.5 in Maryland, partly from PJM capacity prices.
FOR RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS The report puts the inflation-adjusted rise in national-average residential prices at 5.6% from 2019 to 2025.
The framework sets out to map the financing of AI: “How the money flows, where it cracks, what it buys, who can absorb it, and what happens when revenue can’t catch up.”
The framework does not discuss Berkeley Lab’s retail electricity price data.
What Is Not Established
The report’s data run through 2025 and describe relationships across states, not the cause of any single state’s prices. Its authors say the residential relationship is less clear than the all-sector one and that past patterns may not hold as load growth accelerates. The report does not estimate how much data centers alone added to any customer’s bill.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Berkeley Lab’s July 2026 update puts inflation-adjusted US retail electricity prices 3% above 2019, with 29 states lower over that period, while recording a 2.6% real increase from 2024 to 2025 and large PJM-driven rises in the Mid-Atlantic. By our arithmetic, the six fastest-growing states averaged an 11.2% real decline.
A note on sourcing. National, state and PJM figures and the quoted passages come from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Retail Electricity Price Trends and Drivers: Data Update-2026 Edition (July update), written with co-authors from The Brattle Group, and its data file, read on 7 November 2026. State percentage changes and the six-state average are our arithmetic from that data file. The lead came from a reader-passed post on X.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
