• THE GRID
The Week America Burned 100,000 Gigawatt-Hours
One hundred thousand.
That's how many gigawatt-hours the U.S. grid pumped out during the week of June 28 through July 4. It had never done that before. Not once in history.
Edison Electric Institute data shows the total hit 100,996 GWh. The old record was 99,445 GWh, set in July 2022. This one blew past it by more than 1,500 GWh.
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Weekly Output
100,996 GWh
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Prior Record
99,445 GWh
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Above Baseline
+22%
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12-Mo Output Growth
+2.3%
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A heat dome sat on the eastern half of the country. Heat indexes hit 115°F. Families ran air conditioners around the clock. The grid ran 22% above its normal weekly load.
But heat alone doesn't explain what's changed.
Look at the 12-month number. Total U.S. output reached 4,346,875 GWh over the past year. That's up 2.3% from the year before. For a grid that barely grew for a decade, 2.3% is a jolt.
Where's the new demand? Data centers. Canary Media reported that U.S. data centers consumed 313 terawatt-hours in 2025 alone. That's more than the entire economies of Spain or Australia use in a year. And it's still growing.
Google just showed us the curve. Its latest report revealed a 37% jump in power use year over year. Total use has surged 250% since 2019. One company.
"Hitting 100,000 gigawatt-hours in a single week for the first time in history is a milestone — and a preview of what the grid of the future must be built to handle."
He's right. But "built to handle" costs money. Dominion, Duke, and FirstEnergy worked nonstop during the holiday week to keep lights on. They did. Barely.
The grid is now caught between two rising curves. Climate is pushing peak demand higher. Data centers are pushing base demand higher. Both at the same time.
The old grid was built for a world where demand was flat. That world is gone. The 100,000 GWh week is the new floor, not the ceiling.
• RESISTANCE
Florida Just Drew the Line on Who Pays for Data Centers
On July 1, a new law took effect in Florida. SB 484. It passed the state Senate 31–6. The House voted 92–16. Governor DeSantis signed it in May.
The core rule is simple. Utilities cannot pass data center costs onto your power bill. Big users — 50 megawatts and up — must pay their full cost of service.
Florida SB 484 (effective July 1): Bars utilities from shifting data center costs to homes and small firms. Requires 50+ MW users to cover full costs. Tightens water permits. Preserves local veto power.
Oklahoma HB 2992 (signed May 11): Similar cost rules for loads over 75 MW.
116 municipalities have now imposed local data center moratoriums as of late June 2026.
Florida is not alone. Oklahoma passed its own version. And at the local level, 116 cities and counties have hit pause on new data center builds.
A Gallup poll in the spring found 71% of Americans oppose data centers near their homes. Monterey Park, California, went further — voters banned data centers outright. The vote was 88% in favor. It's the first city in the nation with a permanent ban.
The math drove this. Utilities filed $9.4 billion in rate hike requests in Q1 2026, affecting more than 81 million customers. When bills go up, people ask why. And "data centers" is now the answer they keep hearing.
The political winds have shifted. Data centers will still get built — but in states that make tech pay its own freight.
• BLACKOUT WATCH
Three Risks the Market Isn't Pricing
The loads that vanish. NERC flagged a new kind of grid risk this summer: large loads — like data centers — that disconnect from the grid without warning. Recent events in the Eastern Interconnection and ERCOT saw big users drop off suddenly, destabilizing local grids. As data centers grow to hundreds of megawatts, a single facility going dark can swing an entire region's supply balance.
The AI ROI gap. Only 25% of S&P 500 companies can point to a measurable benefit from AI, per Morgan Stanley. Yet Big Tech capex is on pace to reach roughly $725 billion in 2026 — up 77% from last year. The spending keeps rising. The proof keeps lagging. If even a few big players slow down, the demand forecasts that utilities are building around could crack overnight.
Hotter summers, faster than planned. The EIA projects 1,610 cooling degree days this year — 4% above 2025, with Q3 running 8% hotter than the same stretch last year. Grid planners used to treat extreme heat as a rare event. System planners and grid operators now treat it as a "design baseline." When you add rising data center load to rising cooling load, the margin for error shrinks fast.
The market is betting the demand curve only goes up. Every one of these risks bends it the other way. The forecasts are priced for certainty — and certainty is the one thing the grid no longer has.
