Kansas City is preparing for a massive surge in electricity demand. Port KC has approved $10 billion in bonds for Project Mica, a new data campus in the Northland, and authorized up to $100 billion for Project Kestrel, a long-term tech development near Kansas City International Airport. These projects promise jobs and tax revenue — but the real test is simple: Will they make our electric bills better or worse?
Across the state line, regulators are already rewriting the rules for huge energy users. Just this month, Kansas approved a Large Load Power Service plan for facilities that hit a peak load of 75 megawatts or more, roughly the size of a large data center. Missouri followed with a similar rate for Evergy’s Missouri service territory. While these tariffs aim to ring-fence costs so tech giants pay for their own substations, they also serve to secure the utility’s massive infrastructure investments. They lock in data centers as premium customers, but for the average family, the assurance that this demand won’t bleed into higher electric rates is a promise, not a guarantee.
The prospect of higher bills is alarming because household electricity costs are already climbing. For many residents, this is an energy burden — the share of income spent just to keep the lights on. One study identified Kansas City as a Top 10 city for this burden. With average monthly residential electricity bills in 2024 already hitting $124 in Kansas and $129 in Missouri, and recent rate hikes adding to the tab, we cannot afford a grid of haves and have-nots, where data centers get premium reliability while residents face higher bills and outages…