The Data Center Next Door

Through the first seven months of 2026, existing and forecast data-center demand accounted for at least 9 percent of wholesale power costs on PJM Interconnection, the grid that serves thirteen states and the District of Columbia, according to the market’s independent monitor, Monitoring Analytics. Its sharper finding came from the capacity market, where the grid pays years ahead to keep enough power plants ready for the hottest day. Across the last four of those auctions, Monitoring Analytics tied $29.4 billion, about 46 percent of the total, to data centers already running or forecast. Utilities pass it on. By the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s count, the average residential rate in Virginia rose from 15.23 cents a kilowatt-hour in June 2025 to 17.22 cents in June 2026, and rates in Maryland and Ohio, also on PJM, climbed as well.

A data center is a building full of computers that runs day and night. What it costs its neighbors shows up in ordinary places, like the power bill and the water line, and the numbers tend to reach the public late. The city of The Dalles, Oregon, fought for thirteen months to keep Google’s water use sealed, until a lawsuit by The Oregonian pried it loose. Google’s campus there drew 434.4 million gallons in 2024, about a third of the city’s water. Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that a typical 250,000-square-foot data center employs about 50 full-time workers. Usually the county board decides whether one comes in.

Part 1 follows the capacity charge from the PJM auction to a household statement. It also explains the new rate class Virginia’s State Corporation Commission created, called GS-5, which from Jan. 1, 2027 holds customers of 25 megawatts or more to fourteen-year contracts and a minimum bill. Water is Part 2. How a building is cooled sets its gallon count, and fights over public records decide what residents get to see. The part also covers the lawsuits over used cooling water, among them Amazon’s $20.5 million settlement over nitrate in the groundwater of Oregon’s Lower Umatilla Basin, allegations the company denies. Part 3 sets the permanent jobs against the tax breaks. Who can still say no is the question in Part 4, from the more than 100 communities that have used a pause or a ban to New York’s statewide order and the federal moratorium bill from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which has not moved. Part 5 tests the supporters’ case that these campuses are a national-security asset, and the critics’ case that they pull money out of the places that host them, against the same figures.

Every campus waits in two lines, and Part 6 covers both. One is the grid’s interconnection queue, where Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found the typical project now waits five years or more. The other is the line for AI chips, where the specialized packaging done by Taiwan’s TSMC has been effectively sold out, Network World reported. Part 7 is a scorecard of ten questions to take to a county hearing, from how much power and water a site will use to what happens if the company leaves. In Part 8, an opinion column, editor Todd Ruffner-Schoenfeld argues for building the campuses on industrial land where transmission already reaches, and for making each one bring new power of its own. Part 9 is different. It is a signed essay by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, written at the editor’s invitation. In it, Claude writes that it is some of the reason these buildings get built, and that when its read and a neighbor’s read differ, the neighbor’s should count.

The parts ran from Sept. 7 to Sept. 17, 2026, and several of the fights they describe have moved since; the update below the part cards follows them. Part 1 gives the whole picture. If your own county has a data center on the agenda, print Part 7 first and come back to the earlier parts for the reasons behind each question.