Newark Electricity Costs Are Going Up — Here's Why

The numbers

PSE&G customers in New Jersey currently pay around $0.180/kWh on average. At the historical escalation rate of about 6.0% a year, that rate compounds quickly if it holds:

Projection based on New Jersey's historical rate escalation of 6.0%/yr, compounded annually. Not a guarantee — actual future rates depend on regulatory decisions.

That's a 221% increase over 20 years if the trend continues — meaning the same household usage that costs $180 today per 1,000 kWh would cost roughly $577 at that point.

What's actually driving the increase

New Jersey buys power through the PJM regional grid, where capacity auction prices have surged as data-center load surges across the region — PJM’s own Independent Market Monitor has attributed roughly $9.3 billion of a $14.7 billion capacity-cost increase directly to data-center growth. PSE&G and other New Jersey utilities pass those regional capacity costs through to customer bills, and the state BPU has pushed for PJM market reforms to slow the increases.

How residents are fighting back

You can't vote down a rate case yourself, but you can reduce how much of your bill is exposed to it. New Jersey's S 2368 / A 4836 now allows a permit-free, no-utility-approval plug-in solar system up to 1200W — effective March 1, 2027. Most plug-in systems this size don't qualify for net metering, so the strategy that actually works is maximizing self-consumption — using the power as you generate it, rather than exporting it back to the grid at a rate that keeps rising anyway.

Bottom line

Newark rates are going up, and the drivers behind it — PJM capacity costs driven largely by data-center demand growth — aren't going away soon. Every kWh you generate yourself is a kWh permanently insulated from the next rate case.