Data centres are one of the fastest-growing loads on Canadian grids right now, and the scale of what is being requested is large enough to reshape how provinces plan for electricity supply. The demand is changing what homeowners know about electricity costs before they ever talk to an installer.
A New Kind of Demand
The numbers coming out of provincial grid operators are significant. Ontario has already received connection requests from data centres totalling over 6,500 megawatts, which is close to 30% of the province's entire 2024 peak demand. The IESO projects that data centres will account for 13% of all new Ontario electricity demand by 2035. Alberta went from 200 megawatts of data centre connection requests in the first quarter of 2024 to nearly 12,000 megawatts by the first quarter of 2025, driven almost entirely by AI infrastructure investment. Hydro-Québec has identified data centres as the single largest new load category in its supply planning for the next decade.
The grid infrastructure serving Canadian homes was not built to absorb this kind of demand. Every province is now planning into a different reality than the one their systems were sized for.
What This Means for Supply and Rates
Adding large new loads to a grid that was not designed for them costs money, and those costs flow through the system. Ontario's residential electricity commodity rates increased roughly 29 to 30% in November 2025, the largest single adjustment since 2019. BC Hydro customers are seeing 3.75% rate increases in both 2025 and 2026. In Alberta, new gas generation capacity being built specifically for data centre load is putting additional upward pressure on rates that are already among the highest in the country.
Data centres are not the only factor in rate increases, and the debate over who should absorb grid upgrade costs is ongoing in every province. But the pattern is consistent: Canadian grids are being asked to serve demand they were not built for, and that is showing up in the cost of electricity across the country.
The Demand Is Not Going Away
Ontario, Alberta, BC, and Quebec are all managing large backlogs of data centre connection requests and working to build generation capacity to keep pace. The federal government has identified data infrastructure as strategically important. That means the demand pressure reshaping the grid right now is a long-term condition, not a temporary one.
If you want to talk about how data centres could impact your installations, we are happy to get into it with you.