What AI data centers are doing to your electric bill
Eli Hiller/The Washington Post via Getty Images
As a country, we are spending more to get data centers up and running than we spent to build the entire interstate highway system. (Yes, that's inflation-adjusted.) With tech companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, data centers have kind of become the thing in the US economy.
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.
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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.
Music: Universal Production Music - "Sideways Slimer," "Now You In My Head," and "Anaconda"
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