I keep hearing how everyone’s electric bills are going up with AI data centers near them. Why aren’t the companies paying the bill? Or is it building the infrastructure to accommodate them the issue?
I keep hearing how everyone’s electric bills are going up with AI data centers near them. Why aren’t the companies paying the bill? Or is it building the infrastructure to accommodate them the issue?
This bears repeating. Datacenters do have to pay the light bill. Even when the VC money dries up. It’s a beautiful thing.
Naw, they’ll just declare bankruptcy and the municipalities will foot the bills for the infrastructure debt.
Basically, have you even seen the Simpsons monorail episode? It’s that.
But their rates are significantly lower then consumers
In certain periods they might have cheaper prices than regular consumers and in other periods it might be more expensive. They just have a fixed price agreement. No producer of electricity hands out free power.
The problem is that because of that, consumer prices have to rise.
And usually the company in charge of power delivery can change their rates regardless of a fixed price agreement from the power generation company.
I don’t think it’s all bad in the long run. A higher base load also give higher incentives to install renewable energy. In Denmark we have issues with the cannibalisation effect, i.e. We have reach a point where it’s no longer financially viable to install more renewable assets. We often see negative power prices on windy and sunny days, which forces the renewable asset owners to either turn off their assets during these periods, or pay the negative spot price.
The US is very different in that regard. This will only be a detriment to the consumers, because extra capacity will be provided by fossil fuels.
But still, wouldn’t renewable assets suppliers have an incentive to install assets in these areas? If the spot price is high and they can produce “free” electricity, their earnings are a lot higher than the fossil fuel plants.
Our federal government is currently hostile towards renewables, and they’re sticking these data centers in states whose leadership largely aligns with the feds.
To build a new power plant, you need approvals and permits, and the fossil fuel corporations pay lots of money on astroturfing to sway public opinion, filing BS lawsuits to bleed the competition dry, or just outright bribing officials.
What you’re saying makes perfect sense if you’re not only planning one quarter at a time. Their goal is to maximize short term profits even if it hurts them in the long run.