Grid congestion cost the US a record $17 billion last year

The cost of moving electricity around the country's power grid hit a record $17 billion in 2025, up from $12 billion the year before, according to a new report from Grid Strategies. This "congestion" cost happens when power lines don't have enough capacity to move cheap electricity from where it's generated to where people need it, forcing grid operators to run more expensive local power plants instead. Those extra costs tend to flow through to electricity bills over time.

The jump comes from a mix of causes: not enough new transmission lines being built, last year's extreme summer heat driving up demand, and high natural gas prices that widen the price gap between regions. The grid operator covering much of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, PJM, had the highest costs at $3.2 billion, while Texas's ERCOT followed at $2.5 billion, driven partly by data centers and oil and gas activity straining the grid. The West, which lacks a unified grid operator across most of the region, has long had the highest congestion costs in the country, though those are harder to measure precisely.

Fixes are underway but slow. Texas approved a major transmission expansion in December that won't be finished until the early 2030s. Other regions are testing software that reroutes power around congested lines, which has already saved one grid operator tens of millions of dollars. For homeowners, this mostly matters as one of the underlying forces pushing electricity prices upward nationally, alongside rising demand and fuel costs, rather than something tied to any single state's utility bill today.