TOKEN RUNNER // THE A.I. UNIVERSE EXPLAINED · 27 October 2026

Right Number, Wrong Blame

A post went viral this week. We checked it against the government's own numbers.

The post

A viral post said American electricity now costs 19.6 cents a kilowatt-hour and that AI did it. The number is the government's own, to the digit. The state figures are not, and the timing does not fit the blame: most of the rise since 2019 had come by 2023, before the data-centre build-out.

The post went up on X on 20 October 2026 from a private-sized account, so it is not named here. It put four figures on the table: "hitting 19.6¢ per kWh in August 2026", "40% higher than in 2019", "nearly 70%" for California and New York, and "90%" for Maine. It laid the rise at the door of "Big Tech's AI gold rush".

Two agencies publish the price of residential electricity in the United States, by different methods. We checked each figure against both, and the blame against the years.

A frame of the film: the post's four figures: 19.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, up 40% since 2019, Maine up 90%, California and New York up nearly 70%

Two agencies, two methods

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks what city households pay. Its series comes from the consumer price index's sample of urban households, and its name says "U.S. city average".

The Energy Information Administration counts every residential customer in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Its price is revenue divided by sales, from the utilities' own monthly reports: "calculated by dividing the total monthly revenue by the corresponding total monthly sales for each sector and geographic area".

A frame of the film: the two agencies' methods side by side, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' fact sheet and the Energy Information Administration's glossary

For August 2026 the Bureau's figure is $0.196 per kilowatt-hour, and so is September's. The Energy Information Administration's August figure is 18.16 cents, a preliminary estimate in its own words. Different methods. Both real.

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Source: BLS, Average Price Data, series APU000072610 (the public API v2, read 27 October 2026); EIA, API v2 electricity/retail-sales (the pipeline's records of 19 October 2026); EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Tables 5.3 and 5.6.A (published 27 October 2026); a post on X of 20 October 2026 (the poster not named)

A frame of the film: the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 19.6 cents for August 2026, beside the chart of the two series

The number is right

So the headline number is right. The post's 19.6 cents is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' own figure for August 2026.

Its forty per cent since 2019 holds on both series, before inflation. The Bureau's August 2019 price was 13.9 cents; August 2026 is 41.0 per cent more, our arithmetic. The Energy Information Administration's 18.16 cents for August 2026 is 39.6 per cent more than its 2019 annual average of 13.01, a month set against a year.

The two agencies measure different things, a sample of city households and the whole residential market, and arrive at the same rise. Both comparisons are in the money of their day, not adjusted for inflation.

A frame of the film: forty percent since 2019, checked: up 41% on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' series and 39.6% on the Energy Information Administration's, before inflation

August by August, the Bureau's series reads 13.9 cents in 2019, 16.7 in 2022, 17.0 in 2023, 17.7 in 2024, 19.0 in 2025 and 19.6 in 2026. The post's headline is the last of those.

The states

The states are another matter. Maine is up 79 per cent, not 90. California is up 50 and New York 56, not nearly 70.

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A frame of the film: Maine up 79%, California 50%, New York 56%, beside the chart of the states

The Energy Information Administration's Table 5.6.A gives each state's residential price for August 2026, preliminary: Maine 32.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, California 29.75, New York 28.65, the United States 18.16. The same agency's published data for August 2019 give Maine 17.92, California 19.78, New York 18.38 and the United States 13.30.

August 2026 against August 2019, our arithmetic: Maine up 79 per cent, California up 50, New York up 56, the country up 37. Big rises, and nominal. Just not the ones in the post.

The year before tells its own story. In August 2025, final figures, Maine was at 28.14 cents, New York at 26.64 and California at 30.92. California's price was lower in August 2026 than a year earlier, on the agency's preliminary figure.

Now the blame

On the Energy Information Administration's yearly numbers, the price climbed from 13 cents in 2019 to 16 by 2023. That is most of the rise, and it came before the data-centre build-out of the last three years. Since 2023 the climb has been slower: 16 to 18.

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A frame of the film: 13 cents in 2019 and 16 by 2023, before the build-out, beside the chart of the price by year

Table 5.3 gives the residential price as a yearly average: 13.01 cents in 2019, 13.15 in 2020, 13.66 in 2021, 15.04 in 2022, 16.00 in 2023, 16.48 in 2024, 17.23 in 2025, and 18.19 for the first eight months of 2026, preliminary.

From 2019 to 2023 the price rose 2.99 cents. From 2023 to the 2026 figure it rose 2.19 cents more. So 2.99 of the 5.18 cents of rise since 2019, about 58 per cent, had come by 2023, our arithmetic on the agency's figures. The table states no cause for any of it, and this piece names none: it says when the rise came, not why.

A frame of the film: since 2023, 16 cents to 18, a slower climb, on the chart of the price by year

Before 2019 the price barely moved: 12.55 cents in 2016, 12.89 in 2017 and 12.87 in 2018. The steepest single year in the table is 2022, from 13.66 cents to 15.04, our arithmetic.

To be fair

Data centres do show up in power prices. In some markets the price of reserving power for them has jumped, and we have covered it.

That price is set in PJM's capacity auction, which this site followed in Who Pays for the Power?. It is a market-by-market story.

But the national bill was rising before the boom. The national residential price in the agency's yearly series was already up 2.99 cents between 2019 and 2023. Neither agency's table says what moved it, and this piece does not either. Prices here are nominal, and the 2026 figures are the agency's preliminary estimates.

A frame of the film: to be fair, in some markets the price of reserving power for data centres has jumped, but the national bill was rising before the boom

Checked

So the viral post got the number right.

It got the states wrong. And it put the blame on the wrong years.

What to watch: the Energy Information Administration's final figures for 2026, which replace the preliminary ones, and the next capacity auctions in the markets where data centres are reserving power.

Every figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Energy Information Administration.

A frame of the film: the viral post, checked: the number right, the states wrong, the blame on the wrong years

Sources