The grid operator for the northeast, according to my Governor, has been well-behind in building out infrastructure. Of course new datacenters cause more load. But so do new houses (we're building as many as we can) and electric cars, etc.
[0] https://www.eia.gov/states/MD/data/dashboard/electricity cannot drop a direct link, but you can expand the "Total electricity consumption per capita, annual" chart
Maybe I’m reading something wrong. Or maybe there is an anticipated increase in demand?
But I essentially agree with you, the destruction of all white collar and creative jobs is something the proponents hand-wave too easily with vague mention of UBI as a thought-terminating cliché rather than a real policy proposal.
(Myself, I'm in a strange position with doppelgängers, because I simultaneously want real human connection and keep getting disappointed with many of the real humans).
I can not imagine getting my children a straight access to internet or a phone or allowing them on social media until after 16.
https://www.nerc.com/newsroom/nerc-issues-level-3-alert-reli...
It is absolutely justified to be extremely suspicious of big corporate. They've earned it.
Around me people are rioting about the construction approval of a new DC, it has all the insane FUD on social media flying around about it.
...and yet there are already 24 datacenters in the area, with the oldest ones running since the early '00s
Electricity demand growth in the country has been flat for the past twenty years. DCs are causing real strains to the grid which has not had to accommodate rapid growth.
A single site consuming more than the entire electrical output of a nuclear core, considering the sheer size and scale of that reactor and its supporting infrastructure and workforce, is just boggling to my mind. It's literally billions of dollars just to feed that one site, if they're being accurate in their proposal.
Interesting considering the similar outcry about bitcoin mining.
3 gigajoule per second. It already has a unit of time.
Meanwhile, the 4GW figure is average demand - Utah consumed 35,075GWh for 2025, so average demand of 4GW (35075/(365*24)).
Another take is that the same companies that are pushing for datacentres are often the same companies that control social media and traditional media outlets and are using this control to foster datacentres onto thee average person who is either wildly unenthusiastic about or at best ambivalent about.
It's all pretty moot anyways.
Big tech oligarchs have gotten pretty much everything they want over the years, it's not like the average person in bum-fuck nowhere is really going to be able to stop them from destroying their watersheds, poisoning their air and jacking up electrical prices.
I wouldn't get too upset about opposition to datacentres if I were you.
Money is King and the King has spoken.
There will be datacentres where ever the tech oligarchs want there isn't anything anyone can do about it.
Wait till they hear about big Ag and how they use, abuse and ‘pay’ for water, while farming deserts.
Many opponents to AI do not view the tech as having a net benefit. Comparing it to food production would serve to make you look more the fool to them despite their claims about water consumption frequently being wacky.
And let's not forget many of the remaining independent websites on the Internet closing up shop due to being unable to afford the substantial increase in hosting costs resulting from aggressive scrapers getting data to keep training AI on.
Or the massive improvement in bots and click-fraud due to AI, pushing an increasing number of companies to embrace heinous practices such as mandatory facial recognition for users to be allowed to engage in socialization.
Or the increased electricity prices already realized around much of the country due to AI both so much of the existing grid's supply and requiring expensive upgrades to the infrastructure - the latter of which is frequently paid for by taxpayers.
All for the wondrous promises of unproven future capabilities.
The real mystery to me is how it's a mystery to so many people why there's a large and enduring anti-AI sentiment.
Here in Nevada, (Warran Buffet owned) NV Energy already has approval for a "Demand Charge" that will increase rates for everyone, and further reduce the ridiculously low amount of money that consumers get for selling their excess solar power back to the grid.
The regulators didn't even resist, but there has now been so much backlash that they're finally scheduling public hearings after the fact. The announcement doesn't even mention the Demand Charge by name, and many consumers aren't even aware they they're about to be screwed.
One of the more obscene things about this new charge is that people with PV arrays will pay a fee for demanding more power from their own grid-tied systems.
https://www.nvenergy.com/publish/content/dam/nvenergy/bill_i...
That's why these independent counsels are pretty important such as the Maryland agency mentioned in this article. Since utilities at least on the distribution side are pretty much monopolies people have no choice but to pay the agreed rate.
I think you are being far too charitable here and in most cases it is weaponized ignorance at best.
Why dig into the minutia of the actual rules when you can just have the people donating money to you while benefiting from you not really fixing anything just tell you what you should do...?
In power grid dominated by solar production the value of MWh of electricity is highest at night (because the supply from solar is zero), the value MWh of electricity is lowest at noon (because the supply from solar is maximal). So the residential grid-tied PV system is supplying power when the value of electricity is low and consuming power when the value of electricity is high.
Better solution than fix rates are digital smart meters which calculate using variable rates from electricity market.
It doesn't make economic sense to push for more solar in a grid dominated by solar without additional investments into electricity storage and these investments have to be paid by someone.
Rollout of digital smart meters for households makes sense, so that people can make use of cheap electricity at noon. Large customers of electricity already now buy electricity either on electricity market at variable raters or have specific long-term contracts with electricity suppliers.
The pressure onto normal citizens will push and increase renewable energy build out (E-Car, Balcony solar/roof solar), to get away from these companies faster. Their utility will increase further, the pressure increases even more.
But people like Elon Musk are also very ignorant: He populates going into space to fix the energy topic, but apparently can't do math because it would be a lot cheaper to use batteries and solar and potentially also sell the heat the DCs produce instead of doing any of it in space.
It would even be easier to just buy something in new mexico, building out the energy infrastructure in a non livable area because latency doesn't matter that much with AI (not all use cases, but for that you have edge locations).
The richest and smartest people (excluding here elon musk) are not able to do a fast proper buildout? ... They could even just build a whole town with DCs and combine this with other energy intensive industries and sharing the prorcess heat reuse.
> Here in Nevada, (Warran Buffet owned) NV Energy already has approval for a "Demand Charge" that will increase rates for everyone, and further reduce the ridiculously low amount of money that consumers get for selling their excess solar power back to the grid.
Excess solar power generated by ordinary consumers is probably being priced correctly - excess solar power generation happens during the day when the sun is high, which means there's a glut of power because everyone with a solar panel generates a lot then. Solar power is scarcer and therefore more expensive when the sun is not shining bright, and this is not the time when customers are selling excess power back to the grid. Generous rates for buying power from customers were an effective subsidy to get people to install home solar panel systems, and that subsidy works less and less well as more and more power on the grid gets generated via solar panels and the difference in grid-wide power availability at different times based on the height of the sun becomes more and more important.
Do you have any evidence for this position? Is this just regulations giving you bad vibes? I’m pretty sure everyone was quite aware the sun doesn’t shine at night whenever the previous rules and regulations were written. Your analysis isn’t breaking new ground.
As the amount of solar increases, the supply during the day goes up, so the daytime price starts going down. Meanwhile the highest demand period is just after sunset, so that's going to be when the price is highest because not only is that the highest demand, that's when solar generation is zero. And it's when people selling solar during the day are trying to buy power back. But now they're selling low and buying high.
And because they knew, the regulations I've heard of set some sort of statutory price that consumers get. This is because it's been fairly likely from the start that if the price is set by the market with reference to the value of the electricity, consumers won't get anything. Because their contribution is largely worthless and occasionally value-destructive.
I am A YIMBY too. But no, big money is not on your side. Big money wants to make money, not make your life better. It would like to build as much as possible for as little as possible, at the lowest quality possible, and sell it for an extremely high price. This isn't good for any of us.
Small money also wants to work as little as possible and sell it for an extremely high price. Selling maximal ROI is mostly a human thing. Also, there are “big money” developers building higher quality houses at higher prices, just like any other business.
Just take a look at ERCOT's website: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/supplyanddemand
Peak demand is 6 PM when everyone gets home from work and turns on the air conditioning.
EDIT: Your chart shows the same thing? Demand is highest at 6 pm, not noon.
People regularly use the demand being supplied by solar to argue that solar isn't delivering when people need electricity.
The yearly peak grid demand in California is moving later in the day and later in the year due to this effect.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/el...
https://www.rte-france.com/en/data-publications/eco2mix/elec...
Batteries are cheaper every week.
Time to build kWh Victory gardens.
That’s not how it’s going to work in Nevada. It will be the highest 15 minute period of each day, so if you spread out your power usage you have room to game the rates and save money. And if you have a bad day it will only cost you a dollar or two and the next day is fresh.
Plus it’s not on top of the total consumption. The consumption rate is getting cut so that people should be paying roughly the same amount as before.
Doesn't it? Suppose you have a battery system which has access to the current price, so it charges when it's cheap and discharges when it's expensive. Then you don't pay the $19/kWh, you run on batteries then -- or sell at $19/kWh. And thereby turn a profit from installing the battery system, creating the incentive to reduce consumption when the price is high.
The complaint here is that PJM is spending money on upgrading the long range wires and passing that fee in a way that's not calculated for usage but instead it's likely divided evenly amongst member states. If you're upgrading wires in PA why should Maryland pay for that? These would taking in new/higher fees being passed to consumers.
The long range transmission lines are different than short term transmission lines. The long range ones appear someone to hit electricity from a power plant in California for a business in Baltimore.
More transmission = more places to find lower prices.
Because unlike many commodities, electricity, once generated, is hard to store, yet supply must match demand in real time. You need to meet peak demand, even if normal usage is not as high. If you pay purely for usage, that might not send enough price signals to ensure that you have the necessary capacity when you need it. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/enn/explainer-how-capac... has a more detailed overview of how markets are being structured to provide capacity, separate from actual generation.
This is also happening in Australia. I wonder if it is a similar story in the US, or not.
In Australia, rooftop solar and batteries have become so widespread, many properties have dramatically reduced their consumption of power from the grid. This poses a problem when electricity usage costs are used, not just to cover the power consumed, but also the grid infrastructure, much of which are fixed costs which are incurred irrespective of actual usage. In response, the regulator is looking at changing the billing structure to increase the fixed part of the bill which you pay irrespective of how much power you use.
ETA: utility companies make profit on capex, not opex
If the increase in usage (with rates staying flat) is insufficient to cover for the return on investment, then who is making the decision to take the risk for making these capital investment? The risk taker can definitely ‘pay’ for an over confidence in the market.
If it is because the increased usage of the grid as a whole reaches a step function requiring more investment, the system can have a gradually increasing usage price rate.
I am trying to find out if someone in the system is trying to eat up the benefits and publicly say “it’s because of AI” or maybe I am not understanding the situation well.
1) the first MW is cheaper to generate than the 100th. Newer plants. Cheaper fuels. More efficient. You run your good stuff always, for peak it’s on demand.
2) the cost of the old plants are already paid for, if adding a new data center requires a new plant; may add a big cost with a 50 year payback.
I don't know of any large community ran utilities, just small ones. I'm guessing the scale starts being a problem eventually.
https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-private-equity-is-drivin...
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/data-centers-arent-the-ma...
I honestly think they should pay fully for the infrastructure that provides power for them. It's not fair to have regular users pay for this.
A) Sometimes, it's existing datacenter that repurposed from "normal" datacenter to AI datacenter with power consumption skyrocketing. There generally is not a ton of approval in this case or power company came by asking for additional infrastructure approval and who the hell denies that.
B) Some areas classed datacenters as "industrial" use so they could be built without a ton of preapproval. Most counties have closed that loophole but existing permits may allow additional datacenters to be built.
C) Local officials approving things over desire of the voters. Alot of people don't pay attention to their local politicians despite them having most impact on their day-to-day life. Therefore, you end up with local politicians who will believe whatever they are told along with just plain overall corruption. Most of it legal.
Also, as someone who used to live in Capital Region, National Politics can suck out all oxygen in the room so local officials are even less likely monitored.
Virginia finally started saying folks using >25MW need to pay something more than the incredibly cheap rates they had been given. But generally data centers have often gottem marked as industrial, and it's been incredibly fantastically advantageous to do so.
What’s crazy is the utility company admits that the infrastructure is for the growth in the other states. They admit Maryland won’t grow as fast. They concede Maryland needs less infrastructure. But still saddled Maryland residents with the extra bills for out of state data centers?
I mean, at least say it’s for Maryland. Just to make it look good? I don’t know? Make some kind of attempt to make it palatable.
I’m wondering if it’s just easier to pass the cost on to people in Maryland than it is in other states? Like is the regulatory environment with respect to this kind of thing more lax or something?
There has to be some kind of explanation. Because on the face of it, this just doesn’t look good. It makes ai and tech industry just seem like robber barons. And tech guys don’t need that right now.
The amount of power datacentres said they were going to use dropped significantly - well over half. So now the utility has far less it has to worry about in big time transmissions build outs.
All from making the people claiming they needed it put a modest amount of money forward. They have to pay $100k (for a 100-MW project) to do a load study. Then they have to agree that they will pay for the electricity they claim they're going to use, even if they end up not using it (i.e., the data centre doesn't get built out and they end up using 0.)
If their credit rating is not strong enough, they have to pledge security or else put up the money.
A lot of data centre operators wouldn't cough up the $10k or $100k needed for the load study. Everything got a lot easier.
The rumor is that many of the data centers have been shopping around in different utility markets, trying to assess where they could get the best/fastest build out. However, they are never informing the utility of sites which they will not develop. So some of these massive data centers may be getting double or triply counted for electricity demand projections.
And since the grid is being updated to accommodate new paying customers, Maryland will benefit from lower future prices. Right? Right?
they're going to have to learn to be a lot more thoughtful about the seething masses (that their products are forcing them to lose jobs to)...
Electricity supply is highly regulated. Prices for electricity are constrained and often set by state regulators. These are so-called "usage fees". But beyond that the utility is allowed to charge customers for infrastructure and transmissio and those fees are out of control. We recently had a court case where a North Carolina utility illegally overcharged customers but the judge didn't assign damages because legally the utility could just charge customers for those damages [2]. And the legislature passed laws to protect the utility as well.
This is going to get worse too because private equity is rapidly moving into this market and they know that capex can be entirely pushed onto customers with no recourse.
So the data centers tend to get sweetheart deals on electricity too. So while the total cost of electricity has gone up (per Mwh), they pay less pushing even more burden onto everyone else. Plus they get discounts on property taxes, energy tariffs and other taxes, as in the case of Kevin O'Leary's mega-DC in Utah.
But this state interconnect bill is another level of evil because it's pushing the costs onto states that have nothing to do with the data center and won't get any "benefit" (there is no benefit) anyway.
What we need are laws that make these projects pay for their own infrastructure. This might cause them to build near power sources. Great. Away from people, mostly.
The level of regulatory corruption here is actually sickening. Take Elon's Grok DC in Memphis that exploits local laws against clean air by using "mobile" gas turbines in the city of Memphis.
[1]: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/power-hungry-cry...
[2]: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-...
This is the craziest part. We've long had publicly subsidized private projects, or corporate tax breaks given to entities with the fig leaf explanation that the projects will bring economic activity, or jobs, or some sort of long lasting, durable benefit, or even at its most craven, keep a stupid populace happy that their favorite sportsball team hasn't left their town.
Datacenters do none of these things. They don't bring any true employment numbers to make a difference. They don't materially improve their surroundings. They don't increase land value. They aren't an attractive neighbor. They don't benefit the tax base, not least of all when you're doling out massive tax breaks and deferments... no one _wants_ them, so it's not even like this is a "well, you're just not a Buffalo Bills fan, but the rest of us are, get on board!" situation.
There is zero net benefit to the citizens in these places to welcome these facilities to their town. Shorter latency to their chatbot of choice, maybe? But in any practical, moral hazard sense, these are all pure net negatives for the communities, and it's wild that these leaders think they're some sort of marquee, glamorous, prestigious win of a project.
Compare this with other, things-that-rhyme-but-aren't-the-same projects, like the TSMC fabs in Phoenix: these projects are bringing a ton of high-paying, new jobs (and, somewhat controversially, an expat community from Taiwan to help onboard them in the meantime), but they're also delivering in other economic terms because of the supply chain's knock-on effects: the TSMC fabs further the reputation of Phoenix as the Silicon Desert that Intel, OnSemi, Microchip, and Motorola had long been working towards, but at a much more amplified scale, and in a truly meaningful capacity. The money being spent here is staying here, and driving some real practical benefits. But even still, it's an open conversation around how careful we need to be with the water usage of these fabs (though TSMC is aiming towards 90%+ recapture in the next few years, I think it's ~60% right now), and other considerations... they are still, on balance, bringing 6,000-12,000 direct jobs, and even more indirect jobs as they continue to expand.
These datacenter projects don't even do _that_ well. They're just upsetting the power grid and creating unfortunate microclimates for the immediate vicinity for a handful of NOC jobs. (And some itinerant construction and engineering jobs.)
Then a new DC creates another 300MW of demand and builds 300MW more feeds
Then the DC goes bust, you're left with 350MW of potential supply and 50MW of demand
Compare with a highway, you had a 2 lane road, and it was fine, with 1000 cars an hour, then someone expanded it to 8 lanes and filled them with another 3000 cars an hour.
Then they vanished, and you're left with an 8 lane road for 1000 cars an hour, paying 4 times the maintenance for extra unneeded capacity.
In reality there's nothing to gain in theory, and in practice it correlates with higher energy costs
Basically every AI company using "catastrophizing" and "ragebait" as their marketing strategy is working so well that normies are afraid they're going to lose their cushy do-nothing desk jobs. Hence the braindead/conspiracy narratives that data centers are going to drink all the fresh water, give your kids cancer, kill the plants and quadruple your electric bill.
What's most hilarious about this; dramatically expanding the power grid is absolutely necessary to get off of fossil fuels, yet the same people who used to scream about climate change are now trying to block grid upgrades paid for by data centers. With zero awareness of the irony.
This will only get worse as time goes on because first world countries are aging at increasing rates. Old people hate change. They're deficit spending their children's future labor while obstructing the creation of anything productive that might dig us out of the hole they put us in.
Humans are so annoying, can't they move away from data centers?/s
Presumably they'd like the infrastructure spending to go to infrastructure that improves their lives in some way. I somehow doubt that, when complaining, the vast majority of said people had in mind "let's spend hundreds of billions of dollars on datacenters while everything else crumbles".
But also, the price of grid upgrades are more and more often being passed directly to customers and you don’t really get a choice of whether or not you’re a customer.
I complain about not enough direct flights from my local airport, if they put in a bunch of direct flights for billionaires only I would complain even harder.
Was your comment trying to normalize this, or blame citizens?