Duke Energy has asked North Carolina regulators to approve an 18% rate hike for households, saying the money is needed in part to prepare the grid for data centers. If approved, the new rates would take effect in 2027 and 2028 for Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress.
The increase would be felt in ordinary bills. A household using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month would pay $280 to $355 more per year in 2028 if regulators sign off on the request.
That is why the filing has become one of the most closely watched utility cases in North Carolina this year. Duke says data centers account for more than 85% of the expected load growth from new economic development projects seeking to come online, and the company wants to spread the cost of building out the system before that demand arrives.
Eddy Moore, who has been following the issue, said it has moved quickly enough that there is little room to slow down and sort it out. “This is the issue of the day,” he said, adding that the large-load additions are coming at such a scale that the outcome could be either very positive or very negative, depending on how they are handled.
What Duke is asking for goes beyond the household rate increase. The company is also seeking a return on equity of 10.95%, up from 10.1%, a move critics say would pad profits at the same time customers are asked to pay more. Duke argues that higher rates are needed to cover past expenses and future investments in transmission, distribution, storm resilience, gas plants and battery storage, while also bringing in the capital needed to keep the system growing.
Climate and consumer advocates want a different structure for the biggest new users. They are pushing for a new class of large load customers that would pay fees to help finance the needed infrastructure and bring their own renewable energy, rather than leaning so heavily on households. That idea goes to the heart of the dispute: whether rapid growth tied to data centers should be treated as a shared system cost or carved out and charged separately.
The case now moves to the North Carolina Utilities Commission, where expert hearings are set to begin next month before a five-member panel of three Republican and two Democratic appointees. A decision is expected in the fall, and that ruling will determine not just how much households pay, but how much of the cost of data center growth gets pushed onto the people already on the grid.
