NPR.

Data centers are getting a lot of heat right now.

There are protests against them, cities voting to keep them out.

You even have both Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis speaking

out against data centers. Two men, I'm pretty sure, wouldn't even agree that, you know,

water is wet. You know, data centers, they are essentially warehouses packed with computers

that make cloud computing and AI possible. And there are a lot of different reasons people have for opposing them, like concerns about

AI and worries about the tons of water they use.

And then there's the fear that data centers will lead to higher electric bills.

Electricity prices are up about 7% year over year, way higher than overall inflation.

And that's driven in part by this flurry of power-hungry data centers.

And the concern is that all the new centers coming online will only drive electric rates even higher.

But that is not inevitable.

This data center electric bill upcharge is not a guarantee. In fact, it is even possible

for data centers to cause power bills to go down. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm

Waylon Wong. And I'm Stephen Besaha. Today on the show, we look at three possible futures for

your power bill, futures where power companies over-prepared for AI, under-prepair, and the Goldilocks

scenario where everything goes right and your electric bill could actually get cheaper.

To lay out our three futures is Greg Upton.

He's the executive director for Louisiana State University's

Center for Energy Studies. There's no reason that inflation-adjusted electricity prices

have to increase over time. It sounds like you're not a electric price data center doomsayer.

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