Charles Hua

Moving to the rate picture, Powerlines reported a record $4.5 billion in Q3 utility rate increase requests filed by investor-owned electric and gas utilities, more than double Q3 2025, bringing the 2026 year-to-date total to $23.1 billion.

Powerline's founder, Charles Hua, described the filings as reflecting an ongoing rise in utility costs.

The group also cited a North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center tally showing residential electricity prices rose about 7.3 percent nationally from April 2025 to April 2026.

For public power, the IOU rate wave has a direct political dimension.

This, combined with the rise of AI and data centers, means that there's just more demand.

I spoke with Charles Hua, the executive director of Power Lines, a nonprofit that informs consumers on the grid.

He summed up the moment that we're in.

Now the grid is getting old, the system is not becoming more reliable, and costs are going up, so there's just this confluence of a lot of factors here that makes this something that unfortunately we can't solve really overnight.