It’s time for another annual reflection from CUB’s Consumers for a Better Grid Campaign. With millions of customers dealing with electricity price spikes, 2025 was a busy year advocating for consumers at PJM Interconnection and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). As part of that mission, the campaign held four media briefings, presented at or attended eight conferences, intervened in at least 10 legal cases, and was quoted by at least 25 different media outlets. Here’s more detail on what we tackled this year…

This fall, the Illinois General Assembly took a critical step toward dealing with electricity price spikes when it passed the Clean & Reliable Grid Affordability Act — sweeping energy-reform legislation that, among many pro-consumer provisions, expands energy efficiency and brings more battery storage to tackle painfully high electric bills. But now it’s time to turn to another looming crisis, both here in Illinois and across the region: the impacts of power-hungry data centers on our bills.

The board of PJM — a little-known organization that greatly impacts how affordable electricity is for 67 million customers across 13 states — is about to decide whether data centers will pay their fair share.

Advocates say new data centers in the biggest U.S. power market should have to stop using electricity when demand peaks to help rein in costs. Tech companies disagree.

What’s happening?
On Wednesday, November 19, PJM members will vote on how to integrate data centers into the grid. As we’ve detailed elsewhere, data centers require massive amounts of electricity and drive up consumer costs. Some, but not all, proposals would ensure that data centers only connect to the electric system if we maintain reliability and affordability.