White House · Donald Trump · Tom's Hardware
House passes act to make AI data centers pay for grid upgrades to minimize impact on residents
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The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that creates a federal standard requiring data centers to pay for grid upgrades made in their favor.
Key facts
- This law is even more stringent, with any development using more than 20 megawatts required to pay its fair share, and has already resulted in a 30% hike for data center electricity bills and a 1.3%
- Even though the House of Representatives has already passed H.R. 9340, it still needs to go through the Senate before finally heading towards the White House for signing by the President
- Oregon is one of the first states to have taken concrete steps in controlling the utility price increases when it passed the POWER Act in 2025
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Summary
The U.S. America’s AI chip rules keep changing, and the rest of the world is paying the price. GTC 2026: Ian Buck press Q&A transcript, VP of Hyperscale and HPC speaks out on shelving CPX and shipping LPU decode this year. Demand for data center CPUs has surged, and AI agents are responsible. This bill would ensure that data centers with a capacity of 100 megawatts or more would have to pay “the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve the load of such large-load customer, including in the event of such large-load customer terminating a contract or other agreement with the electric utility pertaining to the sale of electric energy, or otherwise ceasing the purchase of electric energy from the electric utility.