US Electricity Use Rose 2 Percent, Slower Than a Year Earlier
Data centers dominate the conversation about the US power grid, but the aggregate numbers are calmer. Ars Technica's seven-month look at 2026 trends reports that electricity use has risen by 2 percent compared with the same period last year. At this point a year earlier, demand had risen 3 percent compared with the year before. Some of that gap may not be restraint at all: more data centers are generating their own power, so their demand never shows up in the grid figures. That cuts both ways for anyone reading the number as a verdict on the build-out — it can look modest precisely because part of the load has moved off the books.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
There's a more boring explanation available too: efficiency improvements had largely kept electricity demand stable through the early 2000s, so a 2 percent rise is not automatically the beginning of a new era.
Except the floor is moving. EVs and heat pumps are shifting demand onto the grid, so the interesting thing is the direction of travel rather than one year's growth rate.