Electricity Is Becoming Unbelievably Expensive as the US Power Grid Decays Into Ruin

The US electrical grid is facing a stress test like never before. Thanks to a perfect storm of AI power consumption, climate crisis, crony capitalism,  and a president bent on uprooting perfectly good energy infrastructure, the country's already-struggling power system is rapidly crumbling as costs balloon into the stratosphere.

A recent analysis by Bloomberg underscores just how dire it's getting. In the country's largest continuous grid — a 13-state monstrosity managed by PJM Interconnection LLC — the media company notes that power costs have set record highs for two years in a row.

Spanning from Indiana to eastern New Jersey, PJM's footprint includes some 65 million residents, as well as a constellation of tech industry mega-sites known as Data Center Alley. While the cost of electricity is expected to rise drastically with the growth of AI over the next few years, Bloomberg notes that, in PJM states like Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, nearly 25 percent of residents already can't afford their utility bills.

While PJM is a titan among US power suppliers, it's not alone. Across the country, Bloomberg notes that electricity prices rose at over twice the rate of overall inflation over the past year, putting the national price at a near-record high.

As this is happening, the actual condition of the grid is decaying rapidly. A recent report by Bank of America found that nearly a third of transmission infrastructure, like high voltage transmission lines or substations, is already near or beyond its useful life span. Meanwhile, a whopping 46 percent of US distribution infrastructure, including utility poles and power line transformers, was found to be in a similar state.

That makes it all the more baffling that US president Donald Trump is waging an all-out-offensive on perfectly good green energy infrastructure, the kind that experts broadly agree maximizes grid flexibility, reduces energy costs, and enables economic growth.

Earlier this week, Trump's white house stopped construction on a massive wind farm in Rhode Island that was said to be 80 percent complete, as the president asserted that "wind doesn’t work." That project was estimated to provide enough juice to power some 350,000 homes across the east coast, and was just one of many imperiled by the returning administration.

That said, while Trump certainly isn't making things any better, the current crisis is decades in the making.

A major part of the problem is that the United States boasts the only macro grid in the world without a central plan. Unlike the singular grids managed by China or the EU, the US power system is a labyrinthian bureaucracy made-up of three separate grids, each a jumbled mess of various planning regions, territorial authorities, and public-private utility companies.

To get out of this mess will require a comprehensive overhaul of the current setup — one that the current commander is chief is highly unlikely to authorize.

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