EIA's September 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts commercial-sector electricity sales climbing 3.3% in 2026, accounting for 63% of that year's total US electricity-sales growth, with data-centre development cited as a key driver
EIA expects US electricity sales to total 4,135 billion kilowatt-hours in 2026, almost 2% more than in 2025, driven by data-centre development and more manufacturing. It forecasts commercial-sector sales rising another 2.7% in 2027, 56% of that year's growth.
Verified 2026-09-15
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Data centres sit in the commercial sector, which is driving most of the growth in US electricity sales.
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- American Electric Power, one of the largest US utilities, which counts hyperscalers and manufacturers among its new large customers, signed fresh load commitments in the third quarter of 2026 and now expects its contracted extra load to reach 84 GW by 2031 AEP signed 15 GW of new load commitments in a single quarter
- AI data centres worldwide reached a power capacity comparable to New York State at peak demand in 2025, which Stanford's AI Index puts at 29.6 gigawatts
- OpenAI does not disclose GPT-4o's resource footprint, so Stanford's 2026 AI Index Report turned to independent researchers' estimates of the water needed to cool the servers behind it — as much as 1.58 million kilolitres a year — more than 1.2 million people drink annually
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