Data Centers vs Green Energy: The Race That’s Driving Clevelanders' Electric Bill Up

Source: Jaden Stambolia | · CLEVLAND MAGAZINE · | December 3, 2025

As data centers multiply across Ohio, they’re straining the grid — and your bank account — but local leaders say renewable microgrids could be the key to lowering costs.

In Northeast Ohio, there has been a surge in data centers, with 24 of them located in the Greater Cleveland area alone. With some of them taking over office spaces in Downtown Cleveland, they’re now draining the grid that powers the region's homes and businesses, passing the cost to everyone, all in the name of powering the digital world we live in.

Data centers, and not just those of artificial intelligence, are increasing all over the country to help power our ability to use social media, talk to our coworkers on Teams or Slack and now use AI apps like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft's Co-Pilot.

Inside these data centers are hundreds to thousands of servers, with the average data center housing around 2,000 to 5,000, according to the Pew Research Center. The servers need two things: electricity to run them and water to keep them cool. As future microgrids expand in the area, they might be able to mitigate the effects of the data centers on Ohio's main electrical grid.

Midsize data centers (20,000-100,000 square feet) can use about 10-70 megawatts of electricity, while larger data centers (over 100,000 square feet) use up to 200 megawatts. To put that all in perspective, one megawatt-hour can power an electric car for roughly 3,600 miles. If 10 megawatts were consumed for just one hour, that energy alone could drive an EV car from Cleveland to Los Angeles and back roughly seven times. Scale that to 200 megawatt-hours, and you’d have enough electricity to circle the Earth nearly 29 times in an electric car.

When you add them all up, U.S. data centers have accounted for roughly 4.4% of the nation’s electricity consumption in recent years. Industry and government forecasts suggest that the share could climb into the 6.7-12% range in the near future, a rise that could nearly triple the sector’s power demand.