Commercial Power Demand Tops Residential as PJM Prices Jump 41%

The U.S. Energy Information Administration published its October Short-Term Energy Outlook on October 6, and the forecast puts commercial electricity consumption ahead of residential consumption for 2026. The agency expects the commercial sector, the category that contains data centers, to use 1,549 billion kilowatt-hours this year, against 1,541 billion for residential customers. Total U.S. consumption is forecast at 4,288 billion kilowatt-hours in 2026 and 4,356 billion in 2027, both above the 2025 record of 4,195 billion.

The growth is not evenly distributed. EIA expects commercial demand to rise 2.8 percent year over year through 2027 and industrial demand to rise 2.7 percent, while residential consumption stays essentially flat. Third-quarter consumption in 2026 ran 4 percent above the same quarter a year earlier. The agency attributes the increase to data centers built for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency workloads, along with electrification in heating and transportation.

Prices moved with the load. Wholesale power averaged $52 per megawatt-hour nationally in 2026, 11 percent above 2025, and EIA forecasts $49 per megawatt-hour in 2027. The regional spread is wider than the national number suggests. Prices in PJM, the grid operator covering 13 states and the District of Columbia, are forecast 41 percent above 2025, the largest increase of any region, while Mid-Columbia prices in the Pacific Northwest fall 23 percent. Natural gas, which sets the marginal price across much of the country, is forecast to average $3.16 per million British thermal units in 2027, 9 percent below 2026.

The generation forecast is where the work orders come from. EIA projects natural gas at 39 percent of generation in 2027, nuclear at 18 percent, coal at 15 percent, wind at 12 percent and solar at 9 percent, with 223 gigawatts of solar and 179 gigawatts of wind installed by the end of 2027. Every gigawatt of that carries electrical scope: collector substations, medium-voltage feeders, inverter and transformer pads, protective relaying, and the switchgear that ties the plant to the network.

Commercial load growth reads differently on a jobsite than utility-scale generation does. It arrives as service upgrades, new unit substations, paralleling switchgear, standby and on-site generation, and distribution rebuilds inside buildings wired decades ago for a fraction of the demand they now carry. That is journey-level commercial and industrial work, and it is concentrated in the same PJM footprint where wholesale prices are climbing fastest, a region running from Illinois east through Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland.

Sustained load growth and higher wholesale prices keep utility and developer capital moving, and that capital is what funds electrical hiring in substation, industrial, and critical-facility work. Contractors staffing it generally ask for medium-voltage termination experience, familiarity with acceptance testing, documented NFPA 70E training, and a license valid in the state where the job sits, which is not always the state where the electrician was certified. EIA publishes its next outlook in November.