Amazon's data center buildout is pushing up electricity bills and raising the risk of blackouts, which is bad news for people living near these sites.

• Amazon buys up old power plants near its data centers and restarts them to feed its own servers.
• None of that power goes back to the local community, even though the plants sit in their backyard.
• Amazon has acknowledged that power bills in those areas will rise, and they already have.
• People nowhere near a data center are seeing electricity prices climb by double digits.
• The grid is not built for this level of demand, so blackouts are expected in the next few years.

Outlook: Expect higher power bills and more frequent outages as data center construction keeps outpacing what the grid can supply.