Could booming AI raise your electric bill? Here’s what has consumer watchdogs worried

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — With the AI revolution fully underway, there’s growing concern that the huge amount of energy it takes to power AI data centers could be passed on to consumers in the form of higher electric bills.

Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court spoke candidly Thursday about the growing costs of powering artificial intelligence. “This is happening all across the country and the little guy is getting the short end of the stick.”

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AI’s enormous energy demand is driven in large part by the way it processes data.

Tech expert Ahmed Banafa says AI algorithms run billions of calculations at the same time.

“The difference between what we are using for AI and what we are using for our regular computer is that it’s actually running everything at the same time,” Banafa said.

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PG&E says it’s true that electric bills are increasing for customers across the country but point to the fact that their average bills are expected to decrease this year and next.

That’s something that’s been driven, at least in part, by the removal of temporary costs that had been present in bills over the past few years.

“We’ve completed a number of projects to increase our wildfire safety and respond to emergencies,” said PG&E spokesperson Paul Doherty.

PG&E says they hope to continue to keep power bills either stable or decreasing for their customers in the coming years, even with the exploding demand from more data centers.

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It’s a goal the company says is realistic under the right conditions.

“We’re in a pretty unique position here in California in that we have a grid that is underutilized. So if we can increase the utilization rate, we see an opportunity to help put downward pressure on rates,” Doherty said.

Whether those conditions will be met remains to be seen.

As for people like Court, he remains skeptical that utility bills will remain stable.

“The fact is, it increases our energy demand needs. And that makes us do things like have to build more transmission lines, have to get in touch with more generation, go to a western regional grid. Those things are going to cost money,” Court said.

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