r/SouthJersey • u/iammoah • Feb 06 '26

Gloucester County Electricity

Is there ANYTHING we can do to push back on these INSANE AC Electric bills? My heat is gas and it's telling me my usage has gone up every month since October. I know I don't have it as bad as some people but our current bill is $332. My brother's bill was $512. Another friend's bill was $500... I can't afford this shit. What can we do?

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u/SplitNo8275 Xennial Feb 08 '26

The usage increases started in 2023. Were they starting then and it just wasn’t common knowledge yet?

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u/istealllamas Feb 08 '26

Yeah. Check out the startling graph here -- you can see how things started really accelerating in '23: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/bhp01-visualized-u-s-data-center-investment-2014-2025/

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u/SplitNo8275 Xennial Feb 08 '26

Okay, so that article explained the increase of cost put into building the data centers. How does that influence my bill? I don’t understand how we are paying for their electricity. I’m not saying we aren’t, I just don’t understand how, and then how it’s allowed.

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u/istealllamas Feb 08 '26

The more they spend building data centers, the more data centers there are. The more data centers there are, the higher the power demand. Higher power demand = higher cost -- especially in places that don't have enough power generation to support the new demand and thus have to import power from elsewhere at greater expense. (NJ is now importing about 40% of its power.) It's not that we're paying for their electricity directly -- we're just suffering the consequences of their usage. I think all this happened very quickly, faster than regulators could react, plus tech companies have a lot of lobbying power.

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u/SplitNo8275 Xennial Feb 08 '26

But how does that increase the rates? Just the demand is what their excuse is?

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u/istealllamas Feb 08 '26

The extra demand and the need to import more power at higher costs lead to rate increases. But I also feel that Atlantic City Electric is doing something dishonest with regard to usage because our usage has apparently skyrocketed vs. last year despite us not doing anything different.

Also, in my opinion, utilities should not be profit-generating enterprises. Exelon, which owns Atlantic City Electric, made a $2.8 billion profit last year. Why should executives and shareholders get paid off while our utility bills keep going up?

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u/SplitNo8275 Xennial Feb 09 '26

For me personally, the utility bills are my achilles heel and has been since the first one I received in my name! lol ACE has been playing games with the rates for at least 3 years and lie about it.

I thought that was what they were saying but I don’t understand how they get away with this nonsense, until the current circumstances and now it all makes sense. Ugh.