An advocacy-run tracker of utility filings now counts more than 116 million electric customers facing higher or proposed-higher power bills, spread across 49 states and Washington, D.C. In a handful of states the increase runs $40 a month or more, a figure that lands hardest on households living on a fixed Social Security check. The tally captures a squeeze that has been building for two years, driven less by any single price spike than by a wave of rate cases moving through state regulators at the same time.
A left-leaning tracker puts the count at 116 million electric customers
The number comes from the Center for American Progress, which produces the tally in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Both are advocacy organizations that favor clean-energy policy, so the framing leans in that direction, but the underlying counts are drawn from utility filings and decisions in state public utility commission dockets rather than from opinion. The August update reports that at least 275 electric and natural gas utilities have already implemented increases, won approval for them, or proposed them starting in 2025 or later.
The scope is what makes the figure striking. According to the group’s utility rate hikes tracker, those increases reach more than 116 million electric customers and nearly 60 million natural gas customers, covering an estimated 71 percent of electricity customers and 75 percent of natural gas customers nationwide. The estimate is dated to the end of July, and the customer counts lean on federal Energy Information Administration data, meaning the household figure reflects an established methodology rather than a one-off headline.
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Data centers, an aging grid, and gas prices are pushing rates up
The reasons rates are climbing so fast, and varying so much by region, come down to a few forces stacking on top of one another. A central one is surging demand from artificial-intelligence data centers, which draw enormous amounts of power and force utilities to build new generation and transmission that ratepayers ultimately fund. Layered on that are the delayed maintenance and rising costs of modernizing an aging electric grid, plus extreme-weather events that damage equipment and strain supply.
Fuel prices add another push. Spikes in natural gas prices feed directly into electricity costs in much of the country, since gas-fired plants set the marginal price in many regional markets. The tracker’s authors also attribute part of the pressure to federal policy choices that have slowed new clean-energy generation, an argument consistent with the group’s clean-energy stance, though the grid and data-center dynamics are widely cited across the industry regardless of political framing.
The result is a patchwork rather than a uniform national increase. Because each state’s public utility commission approves rate cases separately, one household might see a modest single-digit adjustment while another in a neighboring state absorbs a far steeper one, depending on which utilities filed and what regulators allowed.
The data-center pressure is not spread evenly, which is part of why some states appear on the list far more painfully than others. Grid operators have warned that electricity demand, essentially flat for two decades, is now climbing sharply as artificial intelligence and cloud computing multiply, and utilities in states courting large computing campuses are the ones filing to build the most new generation and transmission. When a commission approves that construction, the cost is spread across every ratepayer on the system, so ordinary households can end up helping to fund infrastructure built largely to serve a handful of industrial customers.
For fixed-income households, $40 a month is not a rounding error
The tracker singles out parts of Arkansas, New York, and Massachusetts where residents could see monthly increases of $40 or more, and for a retiree that is real money. An extra $40 a month is nearly $500 a year carved out of a budget that rarely has slack, and it competes directly with prescriptions, groceries, and the property tax bill. Independent reporting on the affordability crisis in utility bills has documented how quickly those increases outpace the cost-of-living adjustments built into fixed incomes.
Summer makes the arithmetic worse. National energy-assistance analysts estimate that summer cooling costs have risen roughly 40 percent since 2020, and a large share of lower-income households already report difficulty paying their electricity bills. When the price per kilowatt-hour climbs at the same moment extreme heat forces the air conditioner to run longer, the bill rises on both ends, and skipping cooling stops being a savings tactic and becomes a health risk for older residents.
The stakes climb beyond the monthly statement once a household falls behind. Unpaid balances can trigger disconnection, and while many states bar shutoffs during declared heat or cold emergencies, those protections are seasonal and do nothing to erase the arrears that pile up in the meantime. National energy-assistance officials have reported that the total owed on past-due utility accounts has swelled into the tens of billions of dollars, a backlog that leaves fixed-income customers most exposed the moment a moratorium lifts and collection resumes.
There are defenses, even if none erase the underlying increase. Households below certain income thresholds may qualify for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and many utilities offer budget or level billing that spreads seasonal spikes evenly across the year to prevent a single punishing summer statement. A customer can also ask a utility about medical-hardship protections that guard against shutoffs for those who depend on powered equipment. The organization behind the count says it plans to keep updating the tracker as more rate cases are decided, which means the 116 million figure is a snapshot of an ongoing trend, not a ceiling, and the households most exposed are the ones with the least room to absorb the next increase.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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