Who pays for Ohio’s data center explosion? Maybe you

Ohio is rapidly becoming one of America’s fastest-growing hubs for massive data centers, the digital warehouses powering artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big tech. State leaders are celebrating the investment. Local governments are chasing development. Utilities are preparing for unprecedented demand.

But one question is becoming harder to ignore: who is going to pay for all that electricity?

The answer: possibly you.

Data centers don’t just use a lot of electricity. They use staggering amounts. Large hyperscale facilities can consume as much power as small cities and require massive cooling systems running 24 hours a day. The rapid growth in these facilities is already pushing utilities to plan major grid expansions. Historically, those costs are spread across ratepayers.

This means residential customers could end up subsidizing infrastructure built primarily to serve private tech companies.

Read the remainder of this column where it originally published at DaytonDailyNews.com.