Quick answer: residential electricity prices have climbed roughly 30 percent since 2021, and in some regions with heavy data center growth, like New Jersey, bills jumped more than 20 percent in a single year (2025). AI data center demand is a real contributor to that increase in the hardest-hit regions, though it’s one factor among several. The practical result for sleep: a 2026 survey found more than 1 in 3 lower-income households, about 12.7 million nationwide, now regularly turn off their air conditioning to save money, going without cooling an average of 11 nights a month. That tradeoff is likely to cost sleep, which is worth understanding, along with ways to cut the bill without simply doing without.
Who This Is For
- Your electric bill has noticeably increased over the past year or two and you’re not sure why
- You’ve caught yourself, or someone in your household, turning the AC off or setting it higher specifically to save money, even on hot nights
- You’ve seen news coverage blaming AI or data centers for rising utility costs and want to know if that’s actually true where you live
- You’re trying to balance a real budget constraint with getting enough sleep in the heat
- You want practical ways to lower cooling costs that don’t mean simply sleeping hot
Quick Fix / Summary
- Know that this is a widespread, documented tradeoff, not a personal failing: a 2026 national survey found roughly 12.7 million households regularly skip AC to save money, going without cooling an average of 11 nights per month
- If you’re cutting AC use to save money, prioritize the hours you actually sleep over the hours you’re awake and can tolerate more heat or use a fan instead
- Raise your thermostat gradually rather than turning the AC off entirely: a few degrees higher overnight generally uses less energy than a colder setting while still providing some cooling, compared to no cooling at all
- Improve your bedroom’s passive cooling for free or cheap: closing blinds during the day, sealing air leaks, and using a fan to supplement a higher thermostat setting all reduce how hard (and how expensively) your AC has to work
- Look into your utility’s time-of-use rates, off-peak discounts, and low-income or energy-assistance programs, several of which specifically exist to offset exactly this kind of tradeoff
- If cutting cooling is genuinely affecting your sleep and daytime functioning, treat it as worth solving, not something to just accept, since chronic heat-driven sleep loss has real downstream effects
Why This Happens
Electricity prices really have risen sharply, and data centers are a real, if partial, cause
Residential electricity prices have climbed nearly 30 percent since 2021, a rise that predates the current AI data center boom and reflects several compounding causes: aging grid infrastructure needing replacement, more frequent severe weather, rising natural gas and equipment costs, coal and gas plant closures, and utility profit and rate-recovery structures, according to Fortune’s 2026 reporting. Data centers are a genuine part of that picture, though not the whole story, and their impact is highly regional: the PJM Interconnection footprint, which covers 13 states and Washington, D.C. and has the country’s heaviest concentration of new data center capacity, has seen some of the sharpest increases, with New Jersey’s average electric bills rising more than 20 percent in 2025 alone.
That regional concentration matters because it means the honest answer to “are data centers raising my bill” depends heavily on where you live: in a high-data-center-growth grid region, it’s a real and growing factor; elsewhere, other causes likely dominate. What’s driving the data center side of the increase is straightforward scale: Gartner projects global data center electricity consumption to grow 26 percent in 2026 alone, reaching 565 terawatt-hours for the year, up from 447 in 2025, driven largely by AI workloads. In the U.S. specifically, Goldman Sachs projects data center power demand to more than double, from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts by 2027, with data centers’ share of total U.S. peak summer power demand expected to more than double as well, from about 4 percent to roughly 8.5 percent over the same period. That’s an enormous amount of new load added to grids that also have to serve homes.
Facing higher bills, a striking number of households are simply going without cooling
A 2026 survey of 3,011 U.S. adults in households earning under $50,000 a year, conducted by Advance America (a consumer lender, so not an independent academic source) and combined with U.S. Census Bureau local air conditioning estimates, found that more than 1 in 3 of these households, an estimated 12.7 million nationwide, regularly turn off their air conditioning specifically to save money, going without cooling an average of 11 nights per month. Notably, the states with the highest cutback rates weren’t the hottest ones: Connecticut led at 61 percent, and other cooler-climate states (Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Wisconsin, Iowa) also ranked high, while traditionally hot states like Texas (18 percent) and Florida (19 percent) ranked below the national average, likely reflecting both climate expectations and existing cooling infrastructure. The survey itself noted that these thermostat cutbacks “can affect sleep, concentration, workplace performance, and even family relationships.”
Cutting cooling at night specifically undermines sleep, not just comfort
Sleep depends on the body’s core temperature dropping in the evening, and a hot bedroom works directly against that. This is the same underlying mechanism covered in more detail in how to sleep cool during a heatwave without AC, but the situation here is distinct: this isn’t a temporary heatwave workaround, it’s a recurring, budget-driven choice repeated many nights a month, for months at a time in some households. That repetition is what makes it worth addressing deliberately rather than treating each hot night as a one-off inconvenience.
How to Fix It
Reframe the choice: thermostat setting, not on/off
The biggest opportunity most people miss is treating AC as a binary on/off switch when it’s really a dial. Raising an overnight setting from, say, 72°F to 76 or 78°F generally uses less energy than running it at a colder setting, while still providing some cooling, a very different outcome from turning the system off entirely and sleeping in ambient heat.
Improve passive cooling to reduce how hard the AC has to work
Closing blinds or curtains during the day (a significant amount of unwanted heat enters through windows), sealing obvious air leaks around doors and windows, and running a fan alongside a higher thermostat setting all reduce the cooling load your system has to handle, which reduces cost without eliminating cooling. Products purpose-built for airflow, like a good cooling pillow, may also help comfort at a higher thermostat setting than you’d otherwise tolerate, though we are not aware of strong evidence for the size of the effect.
Look into off-peak rates and assistance programs before cutting cooling entirely
Many utilities offer time-of-use pricing that makes overnight electricity cheaper than daytime peak hours, which can make running the AC specifically at night more affordable even if daytime use is limited. Separately, government and utility-run low-income energy assistance programs (such as LIHEAP in the U.S.) exist specifically to offset exactly this kind of tradeoff, and are worth checking even if you haven’t used one before, since eligibility thresholds and program availability shift year to year.
Prioritize sleep hours if you do need to cut back
If cutting cooling use is genuinely necessary for your budget, it’s more protective to concentrate the cutback in hours you’re awake and can more easily tolerate heat, and to protect the hours you’re actually trying to sleep, rather than treating all hours of the day equally.
Know when the tradeoff has gone too far
If reduced cooling is leading to poor sleep on a recurring basis, and especially if anyone in the household is more vulnerable to heat (older adults, infants, people with chronic health conditions), that’s a signal to actively look for one of the mitigations above rather than continuing to absorb the cost in sleep and health. This is a genuinely common, documented situation, not something to feel embarrassed about raising with a utility, a local assistance program, or a doctor if it’s affecting your health.
When to See a Doctor
Sleeping hot occasionally is uncomfortable but usually not dangerous for healthy adults. Contact a doctor or your local health service if you or someone in your home, especially an older adult, an infant or someone with a long-term condition or on regular medicines, feels dizzy, confused, unusually weak or unwell in the heat, or if poor sleep from a hot home continues for weeks. If someone seems seriously unwell, seek emergency help.
Common Mistakes
- Treating AC as strictly on or off, when a moderately higher overnight setting usually delivers most of the savings while preserving real cooling
- Not checking whether your utility offers off-peak or time-of-use rates that make nighttime cooling cheaper
- Overlooking low-income energy assistance programs out of the assumption they wouldn’t apply
- Cutting cooling uniformly across the whole day instead of protecting the hours you actually sleep
- Assuming this is a personal budgeting failure rather than a documented, widespread tradeoff millions of households are currently making
FAQ
Are AI data centers actually the reason my electric bill went up?
Partly, and it depends heavily on where you live. Data center electricity demand is growing very fast (Gartner projects global consumption up 26 percent in 2026, and Goldman Sachs projects U.S. data center power demand more than doubling from 31 to 66 gigawatts between 2025 and 2027), and regions with heavy data center concentration, like the PJM grid footprint covering the mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, have seen some of the sharpest bill increases, including New Jersey’s more than 20 percent jump in 2025. But residential electricity prices had already risen nearly 30 percent since 2021, before the current AI boom, due to grid infrastructure costs, severe weather, fuel prices, and utility rate structures, so data centers are a real contributor in high-growth regions rather than the sole cause everywhere.
Is it really common for people to turn off their AC to save money?
Yes. A 2026 survey found more than 1 in 3 lower-income U.S. households, an estimated 12.7 million, regularly turn off their air conditioning to save money, averaging 11 nights a month without cooling.
Is raising the thermostat a few degrees at night actually going to save meaningful money?
Usually some, and it preserves cooling rather than eliminating it. A moderate increase (a few degrees) generally uses less energy than running at a very cold setting, while sleeping with no cooling at all saves the most but is likely to cost sleep and comfort. How much you save depends on your home, climate and rates, so we cannot give a figure.
What if I truly can’t afford to run the AC even part of the night?
Look into your utility’s low-income energy assistance programs and time-of-use rates first, since both exist specifically for situations like this. Beyond that, prioritizing passive cooling (closing blinds, sealing leaks, a fan) and protecting your actual sleeping hours over waking hours can meaningfully soften the impact even without spending more.
Key Takeaways
Rising electricity prices, driven partly by fast-growing AI data center demand in certain regions and partly by broader grid and fuel cost pressures, are pushing a striking number of households, an estimated 12.7 million as of a 2026 survey, to regularly turn off air conditioning to save money. That tradeoff has a real cost to sleep, since nighttime cooling is central to how the body falls and stays asleep. Treating the thermostat as a dial rather than an on/off switch, improving passive cooling, checking for off-peak rates and assistance programs, and prioritizing cooling during actual sleep hours can meaningfully reduce the cost without simply sleeping hot every night.
About this article
Written by the Sleep Fixes editorial team. We’re not medical professionals. We research each topic against primary sources and hold ourselves to being critical and thorough about what actually makes it onto the site.
This article is based on 2026 utility industry and financial reporting on electricity price increases and data center demand growth, and a 2026 consumer survey on household cooling behavior. It is not financial advice about your specific utility costs or eligibility for assistance programs; contact your utility or local energy assistance office for guidance specific to your situation.