Will my power bill go up?

Section 1

Who pays for what

In Alberta, the customer that causes a cost pays that cost. A data centre that needs a grid connection pays for its own connection. A data centre that needs new power pays for new power.

Take the largest example. Meta’s Sturgeon County campus is a hybrid. It will draw about 970 MW from the grid, approved by Alberta’s independent grid operator, and Meta pays for that like any large industrial customer: nearly $200 million a year in transmission fees, plus its own connection costs. Alongside the grid supply, a new $4.6 billion natural gas power plant is being built next door by private companies with private money, adding new generation as the campus grows. Grid power first, new supply built out beside it, and every piece paid for by the customer.

Not one dollar of that plant, that connection, or those fees is charged to your household. And if the project ever underperforms, the loss belongs to the investors who funded it.

Section 2

What actually moves your power bill

Alberta power prices have always moved in cycles, because our market is built that way on purpose. When supply gets tight, prices rise. Rising prices attract investment in new generation. New supply comes online, and prices fall again.

You have lived this cycle recently. Prices spiked in 2023, then fell by more than half through 2024 as new generation flooded in.

Natural gas tells a similar story, and in Alberta the two are closely connected: natural gas is the primary fuel for our electricity generation, so when gas prices move, the cost of making electricity moves with them. For years, Alberta gas has frequently sold at unsustainably low prices. With prices like that, many producers eventually shut in supply. New demand from power generation means support for gas prices, and more Alberta gas gets sold at home instead of shut in, with the royalties flowing to Albertans.

The power grid works the same way. In recent years, Alberta has gone through a period of excess supply, and power prices have made power plant operations uneconomical. As a result, some generators have considered taking underutilized power plants offline. This could reduce reliability and increase the possibility of emergency events. New data centre capacity will increase power plant utilization and spread transmission costs across a larger rate base, which can reduce costs for individual Albertans.

What Alberta’s rules guarantee through all of this is simple: the costs of data centre power, connections and infrastructure are carried by the companies, not moved onto your bill.

Most households also have a layer of protection built in: fixed-rate retail contracts that shield you from day-to-day price swings in the wholesale market.

Section 3

Where data centres are expected to help

Your bill includes a share of the fixed cost of Alberta’s transmission system: the towers and lines that move power around the province. Those costs are split among everyone who uses the grid. When a customer as large as a data centre joins and pays full freight (the full, unsubsidized rate), the fixed pie is split among more payers, and everyone else’s slice gets smaller.

That is not a theory. Based on the new transmission fees Meta alone will pay, the transmission portion of household bills is expected to drop by up to 6 per cent. To be precise: that is the transmission line item on your bill, not the whole bill.

New supply helps too. Projects that bring their own generation add capacity to the province. Alberta’s rules encourage large data centres in exactly that direction, and give priority to projects that arrive with new power attached.

And through the provincial levy on data centre computing equipment, plus municipal property taxes and gas royalties, these projects contribute public revenue that benefits every Albertan.

Section 4

And if supply ever gets tight?

Homes and families come first. Full stop. In a grid emergency, like an extreme cold snap, Alberta's procedures protect households and essential services, and large industrial loads are reduced first. Alberta is also building interruptibility into how large data centres connect, so that reducing power use when the grid needs the room is part of the deal.

How Alberta protects the reliability of the grid, who enforces it, and what comes next as more projects connect is a bigger story, and it has its own page.

Is Alberta's grid ready? How Alberta's independent grid operator manages growth without risking reliability →