2026年9月24日，在威斯康星州梅诺莫尼的一个社区里，一块反对数据中心开发项目的标牌竖立着。
A sign opposing a data center development project stands in a neighborhood on September 24, 2026 in Menomonie, Wisconsin.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images North America 在中期选举到来之际，国会正争相展现其对选民关切的理解，即人工智能数据中心及其对电价潜在影响的担忧。然而，要回答其中究竟有多少成本将由居民公用事业客户承担这个问题，出人意料地困难。
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images North America Ahead of the midterm elections, Congress is scrambling to show that it understands voter concerns about AI data centers and their potential impact on electricity rates. But answering the question of how much of those costs will be shouldered by residential utility customers is surprisingly difficult to answer.
这种不确定性正是国会山日益激烈的争斗的核心所在。随着议员们提出旨在保护纳税人的竞争性提案，这场辩论往往掩盖了其底层经济学的复杂性。
That uncertainty is at the heart of a growing fight on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers advance competing proposals aimed at protecting ratepayers in a debate that often belies the complexity of the underlying economics. On Capitol Hill this week, Republicans have been trying to push through the Ratepayer Protection Act sponsored by Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
本周在国会山，共和党人一直试图强行通过由俄亥俄州共和党参议员乔恩·哈斯特（Jon Husted）发起的《纳税人保护法案》（Ratepayer Protection Act）。该法案将要求州公用事业机构考虑让“大负荷”客户承担增加的成本。
The bill would have state utilities consider holding "large-load" customers responsible for the increased costs. Husted is in a heated reelection campaign against Democrat Sherrod Brown, who lost his Senate seat in 2024.
哈斯特正面临一场激烈的连任竞选，他的对手是2024年失去参议院席位的民主党人谢罗德·布朗（Sherrod Brown）。布朗已将哈斯特过去对俄亥俄州数据中心的支持作为主要的竞选议题。该法案于9月在众议院获得轻松通过，并得到了两党的大力支持。
Brown has made Husted's past support of data centers in Ohio a major campaign issue. The bill easily passed the House in September with strong bipartisan support. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer opposes the measure, saying its protections for ratepayers are voluntary.
参议院少数党领袖查克·舒默（Chuck Schumer）反对这项法案，称其对纳税人的保护是自愿的。相反，舒默正在推销《电网节约法案》（GRID Savings Act），这是一项由新墨西哥州民主党参议员马丁·海因里希（Martin Heinrich）发起的类似法案，他认为该法案更有力度。
Instead, Schumer is promoting the GRID Savings Act, a similar bill authored by New Mexico Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich, which he says has more teeth. Several other data center and AI-related bills are at various stages in the legislative process.
其他几项与数据中心和人工智能相关的法案也处于立法进程的不同阶段。
The cost of AI is showing up in customers' bills The question of how much of the energy and grid costs are being borne by ratepayers is a complicated one and has no universal answer, experts tell NPR.
人工智能的成本正在体现在客户的账单中 专家告诉美国国家公共电台（NPR），关于多少能源和电网成本正由纳税人承担的问题是一个复杂的问题，并没有统一的答案。他们表示，这因公用事业公司和各州而异，但最终居民用电客户将为人工智能基础设施建设支付一部分费用。
They say it varies by utility and state, but that in the end residential electricity customers will pay for a share of the AI buildout. one estimate Maryland customers, for example, pay somewhere around $168 to $216 more per year on their electricity bills primarily due to the data center boom.
例如，在马里兰州，由于数据中心的蓬勃发展，居民每年的电费增加了约168美元至216美元。
"We're talking tens to hundreds of millions of dollars [of infrastructure] that are being built by these local utilities," says Connor Waldoch, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Grid Status, which focuses on making electricity-market data easier to access and understand.
“这些地方电力公司正在投资建设价值数千万甚至数十亿美元的基础设施，”Grid Status公司的联合创始人兼首席战略官康纳·沃尔多克（Connor Waldoch）表示。“最终，这些成本都会转嫁给消费者。”然而，追踪数据中心发展对居民电费的影响并不容易。马里兰大学公共政策学院的露西·邱（Lucy Qiu）指出，电费上涨的具体金额以及何时转嫁给居民，取决于电力公司的采购合同、零售电价以及相关监管规定。
"In many cases, it is just ultimately going to end up in customers' bills." Tracking the impact of data center growth on residential bills isn't easy, however. How much of the increase is passed on to residential customers and when, depends on utilities' power-purchasing contracts, retail rates and regulatory decisions about who pays, according to Lucy Qiu, a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. PJM is a regional transmission organization that coordinates the electricity grid and wholesale power market across 13 states and the District of Columbia.
PJM是一家区域性的电力传输组织，负责协调13个州及哥伦比亚特区的电力供应和批发市场。该组织为北弗吉尼亚地区供电，而该地区拥有全球最多的数据中心。根据PJM的独立市场监测机构（Independent Market Monitor）的估计，过去两年里，数据中心的发展已使该地区的6700万用户付出了约290亿美元的额外费用。
It supplies power to Northern Virginia, home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world. PJM's Independent Market Monitor estimates that data centers have cost their 67 million ratepayers about $29 billion over roughly the past two years. "Everyone pays those costs," says Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative.
“所有用户都必须承担这些成本，”哈佛大学电力法律项目主任阿里·佩斯科（Ari Peskoe）说。“这些成本会分摊到该地区的每一个拥有电表的居民和企业身上。”图中显示，亚马逊网络服务公司（Amazon Web Services）的一个数据中心就位于弗吉尼亚州斯通里奇（Stone Ridge）的居民区附近。那么，究竟谁才是这些电网基础设施建设的真正受益者呢？
"They're spread across the region to every business and resident that has an electricity meter." An Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Virginia. Nathan Howard/Getty Images/Getty Images North America How to determine who the grid infrastructure benefits? Data center growth can push up wholesale costs of energy by increasing demand.
数据中心增长会通过增加需求推高能源批发成本。邱说，这决定了公用事业公司和区域电网运营商需要保障多少发电容量。将数据中心接入电网，还需要承担建设新输电线路、变电站及其他基础设施的成本。邱说，要确定这些成本中有多少专门服务于数据中心、有多少也能让其他客户受益，正是确定由谁买单时的难题之一。
This determines how much generating capacity utilities and regional grid operators need to secure, Qiu says. There are also costs with building new power lines, substations and other infrastructure to connect data centers to the grid. Determining how much of that exclusively serves data centers — and how much also benefits other customers — is part of the difficulty in determining who gets the bill, she says. "It really depends on the scale of the upgrade and also how utilities are doing the accounting of that different share, whether it's being used solely by the data centers or also being shared by other customers," Qiu says.
“这实际上取决于升级改造的规模，也取决于公用事业公司如何核算成本分担比例——究竟仅由数据中心承担，还是也由其他客户分摊，”邱说。不存在“一个简单明了的数字”即便如此，哈佛大学的佩斯科仍表示，要得出一个适用于全国“简单明了的数字”根本不可能，因为“有关特定数据中心承担多少成本的许多数据，都隐藏在保密协议之后”。
No "single, clean number" Even so, "a single, clean number" that applies nationwide is just not possible, Harvard's Peskoe says, because "a lot of the data about how much particular data centers are paying is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements."
这些保密协议已在地方层面成为一大痛点，因为反对新建数据中心的居民纷纷质问地方官员，要求解释为何许多交易始终笼罩在保密之中。玛丽华盛顿大学去年的一项研究发现，在弗吉尼亚州所有已有、获批或拟建数据中心的地区中，80%都签署了保密协议。
Those NDAs have become a major sore spot on the local level, as residents opposed to new data centers call out local officials for the secrecy that has surrounded many deals. A study last year by the University of Mary Washington found that NDAs had been signed in 80% of Virginia localities where there were existing, approved or proposed data centers.
多米尼恩能源发言人杰里米·斯莱顿在发给NPR的一封电子邮件中表示，该公司为弗吉尼亚州劳登县供电，该县拥有约250座数据中心。他说：“我们通过向客户收费来收回配电和输电基础设施的成本。这些资产是我们为客户提供可靠电力服务的核心。我们向客户收回的所有成本，均由弗吉尼亚州公司委员会审查和批准。”他所说的弗吉尼亚州公司委员会，是负责监管公用事业公司的独立州级机构。
In an email to NPR, Jeremy L. Slayton, a spokesman for Dominion Energy, which serves Loudoun County, Va., home to about 250 data centers, said, "We recover costs for distribution and transmission infrastructure from customers." "These assets are core to the reliable electric service we provide our customers. All costs we recover from customers are reviewed and approved by the Virginia State Corporation Commission," he said, referring to the independent state agency that regulates public utilities.
仓促扩建带来的额外成本 马里兰大学的邱说，另一个因素仍在发挥作用。数据中心行业急于求成，而等待新型发电技术似乎并不是可行的做法。因此，为满足需求，公用事业公司很可能不得不选择效率较低的发电厂，这些成本最终也将转嫁给消费者。
Added costs of building out in a hurry There is still another factor at play, University of Maryland's Qiu says. The data center industry is in a hurry and waiting for new power-generation technologies doesn't seem to be in the cards. As a result, to meet the demand, utility companies will likely need to opt for less efficient power plants and those costs will be passed onto consumers over time, as well.
另一个需要考虑的因素是公众观感。Grid Status的瓦尔多赫说，AI数据中心等大客户每千瓦时的电价低于 residential 居民客户。可以把这看作批量折扣。瓦尔多赫说，在70%的美国人都担心数据中心会推高电费的当下，“如果你说，‘嘿，这座数据中心支付的电价实际上比你低得多，尽管电力对它们的重要性远低于对你和你的重要性……’那么眼下很多人恐怕都无法接受。” AI建设的益处 不过，邱说，并非近年来所有价格上涨都与数据中心有关。
One other consideration is optics, Waldoch of Grid Status says. Big customers like AI data centers pay less per kilowatt hour for power than residential customers do. Think of it as a volume discount. In the current environment where 70% of Americans are worried that data centers will increase their electricity bills, Waldoch says, "If you're saying, hey, this data center is actually paying a lot less for electricity than you are, even though it matters much less to them ... it's not like that's palatable for a lot of people at this point." Benefits of the AI buildout But not all price increases in recent years are linked to data centers, Qiu says.
“燃料成本……是一个非常重要的因素，”她说，而且，其中一些新变电站和输电线路无论如何都需要更换，原因包括极端天气事件等。
"The fuel cost ... is a very important factor," she says and some of those new substations and power lines were going to need to be replaced anyway due to things like extreme weather events.
邱还指出，美国电网需要升级，以满足电动汽车等用电需求增长带来的更高负荷。她表示，AI热潮“能够加快电网基础设施的升级”。
Qiu also notes that the U.S. power grid needs upgrades to accommodate higher demand for things like electric vehicles. The AI boom "can accelerate the upgrade of the grid infrastructure," she says.
邱说，还有证据表明，韧性——包括挺过极端高温等高影响事件并从停电中恢复的能力——对数据中心附近的居民而言更强，因为这些设施需要配套 robust 的基础设施。她说：“所以，如果有一座数据中心，它实际上有助于……提高当地电网的可靠性[并]减少停电。”数据中心 国会
There's also evidence, Qui says, that resiliency — the ability to survive high-impact events such as extreme heat and to recover from outages — is better for people living near data centers due to the robust infrastructure those facilities require. "So if there's a data center, it actually helps … improve the local grid reliability [and] reduce the power outages," says Qui. data centers Congress