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A visitor observes a computer bay at the PA10 data center, operated by Equinix Inc., in Paris, France, on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.

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In some advanced economies, electricity infrastructure and cost of utilities are undergoing structural changes because of artificial intelligence-driven demand for data centers.

In the process, U.S consumers could be paying higher utility bills because of the sector shifting costs to consumers, warned a latest paper by the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative.

Meanwhile in the U.K, residents may experience higher wholesale prices in light of a proposed reform to the electricity market that would favor data centers which harness renewable energy.

As pricing concerns emerge, regulation and energy grid reform will take center stage in managing energy prices and meeting changing energy needs.

‘Complex’ special contracts

Special contracts between utilities and data center companies are one of the ways higher costs associated with data centers may transfer onto everyday consumers, identified a report by the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative in March.

Such contracts “allow an individual consumer to take service under conditions and terms not otherwise available to anyone else.” In other words, they can be used to shift costs from data centers to consumers because of the subjectivity and complexity in those contracts’ accounting practices, the report stated.

Moreover, special contracts are approved by the Public Utilities Commission but tend to undergo “opaque regulatory processes” that make it difficult to assess if costs have been shifted from data centers onto the consumer.

To remedy this, the report recommended regulators tighten oversight over special contracts or completely do away with them and opt for existing tariff practices.

“Unlike a one-off special contract that provides each data center with unique terms and conditions, a tariff ensures that all data centers pay under the same terms and that the impact of new customers is addressed by considering the full picture of the utility’s costs and revenue,” according to the report.

Jonathan Koomey, a researcher in energy and information technology, concurs with the need for data centers to pay according to their usage of the energy grid.

“The key point, in my view, is that highly profitable companies who impose costs on the grid with big new loads should pay the costs created by those new loads,” Koomey told CNBC.

Beyond utility companies and regulators, “intervenors in the utility regulatory process also play a critical role,” Koomey said.

Intervenors can include a specific group of constituents or a large commercial or industrial customer who partake in proceedings. They may raise issues pertaining to customer service and affordability and ultimately allow for commissions to hear from a broad group of stakeholders.

“They often can dig deeper than the overburdened regulators into the projections and technical details and reveal key issues that haven’t yet surfaced in regulatory proceedings,” Koomey added.

Overbuilt infrastructure?

Another factor affecting utility prices is the excessive development of energy infrastructure.

Utilities and pipeline companies in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia are planning a “major buildout of natural gas infrastructure over the next 15 years,” potentially based on an overestimation of data center load forecasts, highlighted a report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in January.

Proactive decisions on the part of utilities and regulators are needed to prevent ratepayers from being “on the hook” for overbuilt infrastructure, said the IEEFA report.

Policymakers across states have adopted a slew of measures to incentivize, curb and regulate the influx of data center development, from tax breaks to legislative bills, with a focus on ensuring non-data centers consumers do not bear undue costs, according to a report by the Gibson Dunn Data Centers and Digital Infrastructure Practice Group.

Zonal pricing

In the U.K, data centers and consumers face a different pricing challenge amid government plans to transform the country’s electricity market into a decarbonized, cost-effective and secure electricity system.

The zonal pricing scheme that is being explored under the government’s Review of Electricity Markets Arrangements would mark a shift away from uniform pricing to a split electricity market. Under the new framework, consumers in different geographical zones would be subject to different wholesale electricity prices based on the marginal cost of meeting demand at that location.

Modeling from consulting firm Lane Clark and Peacock suggests that Northern Scotland would experience lower wholesale prices owing to their high renewable penetration and relatively low demand.

The rest of the U.K, accounting for 97% of national electricity demand, is poised to see a rise in wholesale prices from the current national pricing model.

The impact on retail prices remains murky as yet.

“It is not clear how this may impact retail prices as wholesale prices are only one part of the overall electricity bill for consumers, and DESNZ still needs to make various decisions,” according to joint comments from Sam Hollister, Head of Energy Economics, Policy, and Investment and Dina Darshini, Head of Commercial and Industrial at Lane Clark Peacock’s energy transition division, LCP Delta.

The DESNZ is the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Will data centers benefit?

While tech firms appear onboard with the lower costs that zonal pricing stands to offer, based on think tank research supported by Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic, whether data centers do in fact stand to benefit from zonal pricing would depend on their type of operations, according to Hollister and Darshini.

Those potentially well-suited for zonal pricing include data center facilities that handle workloads that can be shifted in time or location, they said.

AI training for deep learning models is one such example. Such workloads can be scheduled during off-peak hours when electricity prices may be lower and synchronized with periods of surplus wind or solar power, which would reduce costs and alleviate grid congestion.

Similarly, data centers that do not need to be close to major urban centers or end users — such as those supporting hyperscale AI training, cloud and large-scale data storage facilities or scientific computing hubs — could also benefit from cheaper electricity when located in regions with high renewable generation and low local demand, Hollister and Darshini said.

However, “not all AI workloads are flexible — real-time inference tasks, such as those used in chatbots, fraud detection, or autonomous vehicles, require immediate processing and would not benefit from time-shifting,” they added.

Latency-sensitive applications such as financial trading and real-time streaming that require close proximity to users would also find zonal pricing “less viable.”

Boosting grid infrastructure

Proponents of zonal pricing point to the benefits of reducing the need to move energy over long distances.

But with the National Energy System Operator’s plans to increase network capability and connect more offshore wind, focusing on grid infrastructure is important, “and zonal pricing won’t eliminate those requirements,” according to Hollister and Darshini.

“It’s not just data centers that are going to need this additional capacity on the grid, they’re probably the most high profile ones, but EV charging is going to change the grid. National Grid as an organization have been talking about the change in the demand profile from EVs for a very long time,” David Mytton, a researcher in sustainable computing, told CNBC.

The demands on the energy grid posed by the electrification of vehicles is a challenge shared across the U.S. and U.K.

In the U.S., electric vehicles will constitute over half of all new cars sold by 2030 and is set to place a considerable strain on an aging energy grid system.

While the electricity consumption of U.S. data centers is growing at an increasing pace, a report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published in December noted that this is playing out against a “much larger electricity demand that is expected to occur over the next few decades from a combination of electric vehicle adoption, onshoring of manufacturing, hydrogen utilization, and the electrification of industry and buildings.”

Given this, the infrastructural and regulatory reforms that emerge out of data center management would be helpful for an imminent era of changing electricity demand, said Mytton and fellow researchers.

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Get EV questions answered or test drive one at Drive Electric Month, in your area

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September 13, 2025

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Get EV questions answered or test drive one at Drive Electric Month, in your area

2024 Drive Electric Week EV parade in Wenatchee, WA. Photo: Julie Banken

Drive Electric Month kicks off this week with nearly 200 online and in-person events celebrating electric vehicles over the course of the next month. Events will be held for the next several weekends all across the US, plus a few in Canada and one in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Drive Electric Month is an annual event organized by Plug In America, the Electric Vehicle Association, EVHybridNoire, Drive Electric USA, and the Sierra Club. This is the event’s 15th year. It started in the US as National Drive Electric Week, but for the last few years, some events have been hosted in other countries as well, and now the event has expanded to cover most of the month of September, with a few events in October as well.

These events are an opportunity for prospective EV buyers to talk directly with EV owners about the experience of owning an electric car, and EV owners to network with each other and share tips. The dealership experience is not ideal for many EV shoppers, so unfiltered conversations with EV owners can be a great way to learn.

Each event is organized by local EV advocates, and they range in size from small parking lot meetups and local EV parades to large festivals with lots of booths from nearby car dealers and green businesses. Many events have live music, family-friendly activities, food trucks and the like.

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A map showing 2025’s events

Drive Electric Month has a map and list of events happening over the course of the month. Most events are in-person, but there are some webinar-style online events that you can attend to hear about various topics related to electric vehicles if you can’t get to any local evels. You can also search for events near you.

Be sure to click through to each individual event’s page to see what your local events will look like, what types of EVs might be in attendance, and register your interest.

Here’s a sample of some of the events happening over the course of the month:

  • Oregon Electric Vehicle Association (OEVA) Test Drive & Information Expo in Portland, Oregon on September 13, 10am-4pm: Along with the standard test drives and car displays, this event will have a number of gas to electric conversions and antique EVs on display. It’s happening at the Daimler Truck North America headquarters, and some of the space will be used for seminars and presentations.
  • Drive Electric Month Oahu in Aiea, Hawaii on September 13, 10am-2pm: The largest Hawaiian event is just outside of Honolulu, but there are events on four Hawaiian islands this year, with the others in Lihue on Kauai on Sep13, Hilo on the Big Island on Sep27, and Kahului on Maui on Oct11.
DIY conversions are one of the more fun things to see at these events. Image from OEVA/Plug In America
  • Mesa EV Ride & Drive in Mesa, Arizona on September 20, 8am-12pm: A veteran group of organizers is bringing the EV experience to Mesa Community College on Saturday, Sept. 20. People can test drive a variety of models, talk to real owners and learn how and where to charge. 
  • Jimmy Buffett Son of a Sailor Festival in Mobile, Alabama on September 20, 2pm-7pm: There will be EV displays at this festival which celebrates Jimmy Buffett and Gulf Coast culture. The free festival features live music, local restaurants, parrot-head costume contests and EV drivers who can answer all your questions about driving electric. 
  • Electric Avenue at the Downtown Car Show in Grand Junction, Colorado on September 20, 9am-3pm: At the 23rd annual downtown car show, EVs will have their own block. Spectators will visit with drivers and can participate in a friendly competition for great prizes. 
Knoxville’s event is one of the largest, with 75 cars registered so far. Image from Tennessee Clean Fuels
  • Knoxville Drive Electric Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee on September 27, 10am-3pm: This event bills itself as the largest NDEM event in the Southeast. Along with EV displays and ride-and-drive, the live music stage will be powered by a Ford F-150 Lightning using its vehicle-to-load capabilities.
  • Plug In America Ride and Drive at Space Coast Pride Parade & Festival in Melbourne, Florida on September 27, 12pm-4pm: Plug In America itself is hosting a ride-and-drive at the Space Coast Pride Parade & Festival on Saturday, Sept. 27. The public can test drive EVs from different manufacturers, engage with local EV owners and ask questions of the organization’s EV experts.
2023 NDEW Waterloo Ontario. Photo: Ian Darwin

Not all the events are large or hosted in big cities. There are also smaller events happening in town centers, church parking lots, and so on, often with just a handful of EV owners who are typically happy to stand around and have a frank discussion with members of the public about what it’s like to own an EV, or to network with other local EV owners.

Events aren’t just in big cities. Here’s one in rural Shenandoah Junction, WV. Photo: Robert Fernatt, West Virginia Electric Auto Association

Many of these events are happening in conjunction with Sun Day, a global day of action calling for a sun-powered planet on September 21 this year. These events will focus on how solar has become a drastically cheaper form of energy, and highlight ways that everyone can benefit from more solar and by electrifying whatever uses energy in our lives – whether that be vehicles, appliances, etc.

On that front, one notable Drive Electric/Sun Day event will be in Whittier, CA on Sep. 20th (not the 21st) from 11am-3pm, with test drives, an electrified home tour, and an eco scavenger hunt. It’s being organized by one of the original founders of National Drive Electric Week, so expect to see some EV oldtimers at this one.

If you’d like to attend any of these events, either to show your vehicle, to volunteer to help run the event, or just to show up and look around, you can check out the list of events, then go to each event’s page to find more information. Remember to click the “RSVP” or “Volunteer” links near the top to register your interest (or register at the links mentioned in the event description).

The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.


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Tesla discontinues cheapest Cybertruck, no one wanted it

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September 13, 2025

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Tesla discontinues cheapest Cybertruck, no one wanted it

Tesla Cybertruck sand

Tesla has discontinued the cheapest version of the Cybertruck just a few months after launching it.

No one wanted the gutted electric truck.

There’s no hiding it. The Cybertruck is a commercial flop.

Tesla claimed to have over 1 million reservations for the vehicle. It planned for a production capacity of up to 250,000 units per year, and CEO Elon Musk even said that he believes it could increase to 500,000 units per year.

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Meanwhile, Tesla is currently selling the Cybertruck at a rate of roughly 20,000 units per year.

The primary reason for the significantly lower-than-anticipated sales is that Tesla launched the Cybertruck at a higher price and with worse specifications than initially announced.

To address this, Tesla introduced a more affordable version of the electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck rear-wheel-drive, in April 2025.

Instead of starting at $80,000, like the Cybertruck AWD, the Cybertruck RWD started at $70,000.

However, it was an even worse deal because Tesla had essentially stripped the vehicle of its most valuable features, including active air suspension, a motorized tonneau cover, and even the power outlets in the bed, in addition to removing a motor.

Less than 5 months after launching the new vehicle, Tesla has discontinued the Cybertruck RWD.

The automaker updated the Cybertruck’s online configurator to remove the option:

Tesla hasn’t replaced the variant with a new one. It just stopped taking orders.

Electrek’s Take

I don’t know of anyone who ordered this. It was such a bad deal. There’s already only a small pool of potential Cybertruck buyers, but none of them want to lose all those essential features for $10,000.

Where does the Cybertruck go from there? Does Tesla keep the vehicle program at just ~20,000 units per year?

I think they may try to do an upgrade next year to bring it closer to what they originally promised and see if there’s more demand as a result.


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OpenAI’s spending spree is powering the tech industry. Oracle is the latest winner

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12 hours ago

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September 13, 2025

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OpenAI's spending spree is powering the tech industry. Oracle is the latest winner

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to members of the media as he arrives at a lodge for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Oracle‘s historic stock surge this week marked the latest chapter in the story of a single private company that’s dominated the tech landscape for almost three years: OpenAI.

In Oracle’s blowout earnings report, OpenAI was a key catalyst due to a massive amount of money the artificial intelligence startup expects to spend on cloud computing technology in the coming years.

It’s becoming a familiar theme.

A week earlier, Broadcom shares popped almost 10% after the chipmaker and software vendor said it forged a $10 billion deal to build custom processors for a customer that analysts said was OpenAI.

Among tech’s megacaps, Microsoft has the closest link to OpenAI, having invested more than $13 billion in the company and serving as its key cloud partner for six years. Nvidia’s march to becoming the world’s most valuable company is intimately tied to OpenAI, as its graphics processing units (GPUs) sit at the heart of large language model development and are essential for running big AI workloads.

Those four companies alone — Oracle, Broadcom, Microsoft and Nvidia — have seen their combined market caps swell by over $4.5 trillion since OpenAI burst into public view with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. And those gains are a big reason why the Nasdaq and S&P 500 have sustained sharp rallies, with both benchmarks closing at a record on Friday.

OpenAI’s outsized influence has some market experts understandably concerned. It remains a cash-burning startup that’s governed by a nonprofit parent.

AI's trillion dollar money loop

The company’s $500 billion valuation is supported by a small number of investors betting that OpenAI will prevail in the face of hefty competition from the likes of Meta and Google as well as other highly-valued newcomers like Anthropic and any number of players out of China.

“While we love ChatGPT, OpenAI is still a not for profit limited in its ability to raise capital,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in an interview with CNBC.

Luria, who recommends holding Oracle shares, dug into the company’s numbers as the stock was in the midst of a 36% jump on Wednesday, its biggest gain since 1992.

In its quarterly earnings report late Tuesday, Oracle said it signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers during the period. One of those was with OpenAI, which said previously that it agreed to develop 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity with Oracle.

Investors knew, based on a filing with the SEC in June, that Oracle signed a $30 billion cloud contract with an unnamed company that’s set to begin in two years. CNBC confirmed a Wall Street Journal report from Wednesday that OpenAI has agreed to spend $300 billion in computing power over about five years, starting in 2027.

In the two trading days after its historic pop, Oracle’s stock retreated, dropping more than 6% on Thursday and another 5% on Friday, as other investors began sharing Luria’s concerns.

The new revelations about OpenAI’s massive cloud commitment provided a clearer sense of Oracle’s expanding backlog. Oracle said its performance obligations, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, surged 359% from a year earlier to to $455 billion.

Luria said the concentration of Oracle’s backlog with a single customer “significantly reduces” enthusiasm, particularly if “more than 90% came from OpenAI.”

Oracle didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Altman’s open wallet

OpenAI has made big commitments to several other cloud providers, including CoreWeave and Google, and reportedly plans to put $19 billion toward Stargate, a project President Donald Trump announced in January to bolster AI infrastructure investments in the U.S. Stargate is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, which is separately leading a planned $40 billion investment in OpenAI.

Luria said the takeaway is that “Sam Altman has the gumption to sign very large checks without needing to worry about whether those can ever be cashed.”

OpenAI declined to comment.

While OpenAI will be losing money for the foreseeable future, the company is expecting revenue growth to continue at a breakneck pace. After hitting $10 billion in annual recurring revenue in June, OpenAI is on pace for that number to reach $125 billion by 2029, CNBC confirmed.

And on Thursday, OpenAI got a step closer to formalizing its transition to a for-profit entity. The company said its nonprofit parent will continue to have oversight over the business and will own an equity stake of more than $100 billion as the commercial entity becomes a public benefit corporation.

OpenAI needs the restructuring to take place by year-end in order to secure the entirety of the $40 billion from its latest financing round.

For Oracle, the massive increase in OpenAI spending has landed the company within shouting distance of the trillion-dollar club, which currently includes eight tech peers. Oracle’s market cap climbed to about $930 billion on Wednesday before retreating to $830 billion to close the week.

Byron Deeter, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, told CNBC’s “Money Movers” that he’s still skeptical of Oracle’s prospects in AI. The company has spent years trying to play catchup in cloud infrastructure, where it trails Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Deeter said Oracle remains a “B-level hyperscaler” without meaningful positions in AI software or chips.

“Two days ago, we all thought Oracle was essentially nowhere in AI,” Deeter said, following the earnings report. “They announce this mega-deal, people think they’re the next great hyperscaler – and I don’t buy that part.”

WATCH: Byron Deeter on Adobe and Oracle

Bessemer's Byron Deeter gives his read on Adobe ahead of earnings

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