On July 2 the PJM grid, which covers 13 states and DC and delivers power to 67 million people, came within 2,000 megawatts of a demand record standing since 2006, and the Department of Energy authorized PJM to order data centers off the grid and onto their own backup generators so houses and hospitals stayed lit. Four months earlier Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI had signed a White House pledge promising their added power costs would not land on ratepayers. Twelve days after the record, PJM's capacity auction cleared at the federal cap, $16.4 billion, with the independent market monitor putting over a third of it on data centers. ComEd says capacity charges alone have added about $12 a month to the average customer's bill since 2022, with another $2 to $3 on June 1. The buildings are not safe from the weather either: First Street puts 79% of global data center capacity at elevated climate risk, and Northern Virginia, the largest market in the world, faces both extreme heat and flash flooding. Heat was already driving your bill up. Data centers landed on top of it, and the emergency plan is to switch them off so your lights stay on. Sources: White House, Bloomberg, Utility Dive, ComEd, and First Street.