About one in five Americans have cut back on groceries to pay an electricity bill, or looked into doing so. That’s the finding of a Consumer Reports survey released on October 21. Federal data show why: homes paid 6.9% more per kilowatt-hour from January through July than a year earlier, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The strain falls hardest on lower-income households, just as heating season starts. People earning under $85,000 were more than twice as likely as higher earners to say rising bills strained them “a lot.” Two-thirds of respondents heat their homes with electricity.

Consumer Reports counted people who cut back and people who considered it

NORC at the University of Chicago ran the survey for Consumer Reports. It interviewed 2,003 adults online and by phone from April 27 to May 19, 2026, according to the full results. The margin of error is 2.84 percentage points either way. The interviews predate this summer’s heat.

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The key question asked which trade-offs people had “done or looked into” over the past two years. So the 19% who chose groceries includes some who only considered it.

About 26% turned heating or cooling down to uncomfortable levels, or thought about it. Another 27% cut non-essential spending, and 3% delayed rent or a mortgage. Only 39% said they had never needed a trade-off.

Among people in the same home for three years, 81% said their bills had gone up. Of those, 23% said the increase strained their finances a lot.

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“Americans are being asked to foot the bill for costs they didn’t create and can’t control,” said Sara Enright of Consumer Reports. She told CBS News that “people are cutting back on food” to pay utility bills.

Prices rose fastest in the mid-Atlantic

We compared average home electricity prices for January to July 2026 with the same months of 2025. The divs come from the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.B, released September 24. Prices are in cents per kilowatt-hour.

The pattern is hard to miss. Five of the nine fastest increases came in places on the PJM Interconnection grid. PJM covers all or parts of 13 states and DC.

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California is still the priciest state in the lower 48, but its prices rose just 2.5%. Prices fell in only three states, all in New England.

Data centers are bidding up the cost of standby power

PJM holds an auction that pays power plants to be ready for peak demand. Households pay for it through their bills. For the year starting June 2025, the price jumped to $269.92 per megawatt-day from $28.92, Utility Dive reported. The total cost rose to $14.7 billion from $2.2 billion.

The two auctions since then both hit a price cap. The December 2025 auction cleared at $333.44 and still fell 6,623 megawatts short of PJM’s reliability target, PJM said. Forecast peak demand rose by about 5,250 megawatts. PJM put nearly 5,100 of that down to data centers.

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“This auction leaves no doubt that data centers’ demand for electricity continues to far outstrip new supply,” said PJM’s Stu Bresler.

Capacity is only one slice of a bill. Utility Dive reported that it made up about 8% of customer bills before the 2024 jump. Consumer advocates still say households are carrying someone else’s costs.

“Hardly any of these data centers are located in Maryland,” Maryland People’s Counsel David Lapp said in December. Some tech companies are trying other fixes, as when Google agreed to scale back some data centers at peak times.

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Natural gas isn’t the main culprit this year

Retail prices include transmission and distribution upgrades and, in some regions, capacity costs. That’s according to the EIA’s October Short-Term Energy Outlook. Those costs pay for poles, wires and standby plants, so cheaper fuel doesn’t erase them.

The EIA expects the average home price to hit 18.2 cents in 2026, up from 17.3 cents in 2025. It sees 18.7 cents in 2027.

Gas prices tell a different story. The EIA’s gas outlook puts the 2025 Henry Hub average at $3.53 per million British thermal units. It forecasts $3.48 for 2026.

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January was the exception, when prices averaged $7.72 after Winter Storm Fern. The EIA says that storm and July’s heat lifted some regional wholesale prices.

Survey respondents named utility profits (45%) as the top factor in their bills. Data centers (38%), fossil fuel prices (37%) and grid repairs (36%) followed.

Who pays for data centers is now a campaign issue

The fight is landing two weeks before the November 3 midterms. In February’s State of the Union, President Trump announced a “ratepayer protection pledge.” He said tech companies “have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” WHYY reported. Harvard’s Ari Peskoe called it “an unenforceable corporate commitment that has no details.”

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This week, Trump wrote on Truth Social that data centers must “make their own electricity,” Euronews reported. They should “give or sell any excess back to the local community, or grid,” he added. We found no executive order or federal rule behind the post. State regulators and grid operators set most of the terms for data centers.

Respondents largely agreed on who should pay, and Consumer Reports said many views held across party lines. In all, 84% backed a separate rate category for big users such as data centers. Half said data centers should pay the full cost of infrastructure built mainly for them.

LIHEAP money is out earlier than last year

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is the main federal help. HHS released $3.6 billion to states on October 9, the Administration for Children and Families said. That’s 90% of the money under the stopgap spending law signed on September 2. Last winter’s first release came on November 28.

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The last 10% depends on Congress, the American Public Power Association noted.

States set their own income limits within a federal cap, ACF guidance says. The cap is 150% of the poverty line or 60% of state median income, whichever is higher. To apply, ACF directs people to Energyhelp.us or the referral line at 1-866-674-6327. LIHEAP never charges a fee, so treat any request for one as a scam.

Call your utility before you miss a payment. Ask for a payment plan and about discount programs, which only 18% of respondents had checked. Budget billing spreads the year’s cost evenly, though it doesn’t lower the total.

Check your state’s winter shutoff rules, which vary widely. New Jersey’s Winter Termination Program, for example, protected eligible customers from November 15 to March 15 last winter. Time-of-use plans help only if you can shift usage, since peak hours cost more.

The EIA publishes August prices on October 23. North Carolina regulators also plan to rule this fall on a Duke Energy request that first sought an 18% residential increase, Consumer Reports said.