What AI data centers are doing to your electric bill
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 30.5K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
But along with that growth have come a lot of questions. Like where is all the electricity to run these data centers supposed to come from? And how much are residential customers’ electric bills increasing as a result?
On today’s episode, we go to Ohio to trace one electric bill back to its source, to see what exactly is causing the big price increases people are seeing. We take a tour of a data center hot spot, and get to the bottom of how prices are set from inside the power company.
Related episodes:
- Asking for a friend … which jobs are safe from AI?
- No AI data centers in my backyard!
- What $10 billion in data centers actually gets you
- Is AI overrated or underrated?
- Green energy gridlock
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Today's show was hosted by Keith Romer and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact checked by Sierra Juarez and Vito Emanuel. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Erica Barris here. We are almost at the end of 2025. And there is no way to sugarcoat it. It has been a tough year for NPR and for local stations. But with your support, NPR will keep reporting the news. And here at Planet Money, we'll keep doing what we do best, explaining the economy in the most entertaining and |
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| 0:41.4 | across NPR's podcasts. Visit plus.mpr.org today. Thanks. |
| 0:51.6 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:57.1 | Earlier this month, I visited Ken and Carol Apaki. |
| 1:01.0 | Hello. |
| 1:01.6 | Good morning. |
| 1:02.6 | How are you? |
| 1:03.5 | They live in a little town outside Columbus, Ohio. |
| 1:06.2 | Oh, I can't always predict how long they'll think to get somewhere. They're retired now. |
| 1:12.6 | Carol worked in curriculum development. |
| 1:15.6 | Ken was an engineer. |
| 1:16.6 | And according to Carol, Ken still has an engineer's way of keeping track of things. |
| 1:22.6 | Everything, everything ends up in a spreadsheet. |
| 1:26.6 | He had the grandkids. What was it when you had them do a chart. He had the grandkids. |
| 1:28.3 | What was it when you had them do a chart, all of our grandkids? |
| 1:31.8 | The dad. |
| 1:32.7 | Oh, yeah, their height, how much they grew from year to year, |
| 1:36.9 | because he's been measuring. |
| 1:38.5 | We've got a big board. |
... |
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