Data Centers and King Coal Send West Virginia Utility Bills Higher Than the Average Mortgage

Rebecca Michalski opened a bill for $940.08. It wasn’t her car payment, or even her mortgage—it was her electricity bill.

Michalski is one of the 36% of West Virginia residents who are energy burdened—defined as spending more than 6% of household income just to keep the lights on. Her February bill was greater than her monthly benefits check, her only source of income.

And while there are federal programs to help some families close the gap between what they can afford and what their utility providers charge, many others find themselves caught in a cruel limbo: earning too little to afford their skyrocketing bills, but just enough to be priced out of the very programs designed to help them.

Jennifer Brown is one of them. Her combined utilities reach $1,000 per month in the winter months, making it more expensive to heat her home than it is to make her monthly mortgage payment of $798.

The crisis can be attributed to a perfect storm of factors crushing the state’s residents, according to a recent investigation by PBS—one that is driven by an expensive reliance on coal, a new surge of power-hungry data centers, and a mix of other factors that are driving up utility costs across the country.

As a result, the cost of living in this energy-rich state has become unaffordable to many residents—some of whom PBS spoke to. Since 2019, the average price of electricity for residential ratepayers rose by nearly 34%—hitting those on limited or fixed incomes hardest.

The cost of coal

Generation accounts for 60% of a typical West Virginia electric bill, and because the state generates approximately 89% of its power from coal, residents are uniquely exposed to the rising costs of this aging and increasingly uncompetitive industry. 

The financial strain stems from a double-edged sword of extraction costs and operational inefficiency. The average age of the state's coal-fired plants is 50 years. As these legacy plants age, they degrade and lose efficiency, requiring constant and massive capital infusions just to stay online.

It's a vicious cycle most visible in the declining capacity of these plants. When looking at how often a plant actually runs compared to its maximum potential, West Virginia coal plants ran 69% of the time in 2008, but just 39% by 2024, according to a recent report from the Ohio River Valley Institute.

Despite running less, the fixed costs of maintaining these older plants remain, and those expenses are passed directly to the consumer.

At the same time, competition from cheaper fuel sources like natural gas are further suppressing capacity, impacting even newer, more efficient plants. For example, the Longview Coal Plant, built as recently as 2011, was forced into bankruptcy by 2020, citing "substantially lessened" demand due in part to long-term pricing pressure caused by “cheap natural gas.”

While market forces have pushed for the closure of these unprofitable plants, government intervention has kept them on life support. To fulfill campaign promises to protect the industry, President Donald Trump utilized executive actions and federal funding to force aging plants to remain open while rolling back EPA pollution standards to lower their immediate compliance costs. 

Those lifelines have not translated to lower bills for residents, but have instead locked West Virginians into a more expensive energy model. According to the state’s Public Service Commission, the result is an average household electricity rate that has surged by 73% since 2015, far outpacing the price increases for other essential utilities like natural gas and water.

Transmission and distribution

Transmission and distribution account for the remaining 40% of electricity costs in West Virginia, and both are also uniquely expensive due to the state’s rugged geography. 

Unlike flatter regions, West Virginia’s topography requires high-voltage lines to be threaded across steep Appalachian ridges to connect remote power plants to distribution stations. From there, low-voltage lines must traverse difficult terrain to reach homes and businesses in sparsely populated areas.

All of that makes the physical construction and ongoing maintenance of the grid significantly more labor-intensive and costly than in other states.

Beyond the physical challenges, the Ohio River Valley Institute notes that West Virginia’s utility system is vertically integrated, meaning a single company often owns the generation, transmission, and distribution systems—giving them a tight grip over pricing.

Data center surge

West Virginia has also emerged as a central hub for the global data center surge.

The West Virginia Economic Development site notes, "The Mountain State offers one of the most strategic locations in the United States for data center investment, development, and expansion... With unmatched energy production, abundant baseload power, and flexible microgrid capacity, the state brings the scalability and reliability modern data centers demand."

But to accommodate the massive power demands of these facilities, utilities are investing billions in new infrastructure, powered by ratepayers.

An example is a recent landmark $4 billion investment in Berkeley County, which is projected to span 1.9 million square feet and consume up to 600 megawatts of electricity—a load roughly equivalent to the power needed for hundreds of thousands of homes.

While these projects are touted as historic economic wins for the tech economy, they create a significant financial burdens for local residents. Because data centers require massive amounts of reliable, around-the-clock power, they necessitate the construction of new high-voltage transmission lines and specialized substations. 

Under the state’s current regulatory framework, those costs are often recovered through rate increases passed on to the public.

The human cost

For Michalski and Brown and the thousands of other residents like them, the toll of these rising costs stretches far beyond their monthly bills.

In a state that sits atop a fortune of coal and gas, the basic necessity of heat has become a luxury. Michalski tells PBS that she doesn't run her A/C in the summer and turns off anything unnecessary that might use electricity. Even so, heat in the winter isn't an option—and running her heater is what led to her massive February bill.

During the past year, her statements have amounted to more than $5,000, she tells PBS. After asking family for help paying the bill this winter, she says she's now out of options.

The political promises of lower rates have, for her, curdled into a sense of abandonment.

"It's breaking me. And there's nothing that can be done for it, unless the president does something," she tells PBS, adding that her support for the current administration has vanished along with her sense of financial security.

"And I don't see him doing it. He's had plenty of time."