Monday, October 5, 2026 · Serving all of Hudson County since March 2011Featured Stories
Hudson County households paid the same 17–20% electric increase that hit New Jersey in June 2025
Hudson County households saw the same June 2025 supply-rate increase that hit electric customers across New Jersey: residential bills rose about 17 to 20 percent, the largest state-level jump in…
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Hudson County households saw the same June 2025 supply-rate increase that hit electric customers across New Jersey: residential bills rose about 17 to 20 percent, the largest state-level jump in the country that year. For a typical PSE&G customer using about 650 kilowatt-hours a month, published estimates put the added cost near $20 to $27 a month, or roughly $260 a year. There was no separate Hudson County surcharge.
The increase tracked PJM’s 2025/2026 capacity auction, which cleared at $269.92 per megawatt-day, up from $28.92 the year before. PJM’s Independent Market Monitor found that existing and forecast data-center load accounted for about 63 percent of total capacity costs in that auction ($9.3 billion of $14.7 billion). New Jersey Policy Perspective has described data centers as nearly 70 percent of the demand increase behind the bill spike. Those are related but not identical figures. The cost is socialized across PJM, which serves New Jersey and 12 other states plus D.C.; much of the load growth is in northern Virginia, not Hudson County.
A June 2026 Rutgers / New Jersey State Policy Lab analysis, looking at bills through 2024, found no large detectable effect from local data centers on residential rates — on the order of $1 to $2 a month and not statistically robust. That study ends before the 2025 capacity-price spike and does not isolate regional auction costs.
Local governments have still moved to limit new facilities. Bayonne’s council voted unanimously on August 12, 2026, to prohibit data centers in every zoning district; the mayor signed the ordinance the next day. Jersey City has introduced an ordinance removing standalone data centers as permitted principal uses in industrial zones. Secaucus, which hosts on the order of 10 data centers, had a diesel release on September 11, 2026, at Equinix’s NY2 site on Hartz Way. Early local estimates were about 5,500 gallons; NJDEP later put the spill at about 5,000 gallons of No. 2 diesel into Anderson Creek, a Hackensack River tributary.
In July 2026 the state enacted the Data Center Fair Share Act, creating a separate rate class meant to make large data centers cover more of their own energy and grid costs.
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