GoKawiil
Tech News
An analysis of residential electricity rates finds that investor-owned utilities charged customers 23% more per kilowatt-hour than publicly owned providers. The comparison draws on annual utility-level data covering revenue, electricity sold, number of homes served, and pricing collected since 2015 across the US and individual states.
Researchers studying rural communities found that sleep duration declined after homes gained access to electricity. The study compared sleep patterns before and after electrification, pointing to artificial lighting and related changes in evening activity as contributing factors.
A Consumer Reports survey found that most Americans who have lived in their homes for over three years are paying more for electricity than they did three years ago, with three-quarters saying the increases have strained their household finances. Respondents most often blamed utility company profits and AI data center growth for the hikes, and over 75% said they don't trust state lawmakers to protect them from further rate increases.
President Trump posted on Truth Social that AI data center operators and hyperscalers will be required to generate their own electricity and share or sell surplus power back to local communities. He framed this as a way to offset rising electricity costs and other burdens these facilities impose on nearby residents.
Data show UK electricity generation per capita peaked in 2003 and has since declined by over a third, now matching levels last seen in the late 1960s. The figures indicate net electricity imports rose from 1% of demand in 2010 to 9% in 2025, while IEA sectoral data show industrial electricity use down a quarter since 2005, alongside similar declines in residential and commercial consumption.
A new Wood Mackenzie levelized cost of electricity report finds four-hour battery storage beats open-cycle gas turbines on cost in every one of 43 markets analyzed worldwide. In the Middle East and Africa, storage costs are projected to drop a further 33% to $80/MWh by 2035, while China remains the cheapest storage market, over 55% below the rest of Asia Pacific. Separately, single-axis tracker solar is now the lowest-cost new-build power source in 43 of 48 markets studied, with onshore wind leading in the remaining five.
The US Senate voted 57-43 on September 30, falling three votes short of the 60 needed to advance the Ratepayer Protection Act, killing the bill after it had already passed the House. The legislation, introduced by Senator Jon Husted, would have directed state regulators to consider requiring data centers and other large power consumers to cover the infrastructure costs tied to their energy use.
SWK ENERGIE, the municipal utility of Krefeld, Germany, has introduced a tariff called meinGAMING aimed at gaming households with three consumption tiers: Casual Gamer (2,500 kWh/year), Pro Gamer (3,500 kWh/year), and Gaming Households (5,000 kWh/year). The plan carries a higher fixed charge but a lower per-kWh rate, with the utility claiming the electricity is 100% renewable and offering a price guarantee of up to 24 months.
Google's Nebraska data centers marked their electricity and water consumption figures as trade secrets in annual reports filed with the state's Department of Water, Energy, and Environment. But the redactions could be bypassed by highlighting and copying the blacked-out text, revealing that the Lincoln facility (Agate LLC) used 52.65 megawatts at peak demand and about 13 million gallons of water last year, while the Papillion facility (Fireball Group LLC) used nearly 548 million gallons. Across six reporting Nebraska data centers, total water use reached 765 million gallons.
German utility SWK Energie has introduced an electricity plan called meinGAMING, marketed toward gamers and other high-consumption households, using influencer promotion from streamers like Limcube. The company says the plan is worthwhile for households using over 2,500 kWh annually, whether from gaming rigs, EV charging, or many devices running at once. It carries a higher base price than standard plans, so SWK advises against switching unless a household actually meets that consumption threshold.
Delhi has reduced its electricity losses — power lost to technical leakage and theft — from roughly 50 percent to about 5 percent over the past quarter century, according to an account by researcher Mini Shaji Thomas. The World Bank reports that more than half of countries tracking such losses lost at least 10 percent of their electricity in 2023, with 24 nations losing over 20 percent and two losing more than half.
Researchers led by Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das, published in Nature Communications in April 2026, measured electrical waves of neural activity in the brain and found varied patterns including source waves, sink waves, and spiral vortex-like waves. The team reported that different behavioral tasks were linked to distinct types of these wave patterns, rather than a single uniform oscillation.