9 ms·

It would seem to me that the datacenters in question should be bearing the entire cost of the increase. Anything else is just subsidizing someone's business.

by tw04 1y ago

It would seem to me that the datacenters in question should be bearing the entire cost of the increase. Anything else is just subsidizing someone's business. The utilities are there to serve the people, and Facebook trying to mine everything I do online, violating my privacy, isn't something I have any interest in subsidizing.

linotype 1y ago
Subsidizing big business and the rich is the American way. Just look at how much money we spend on the old vs the young.
- aiaisiskbs 1y ago
  Yep, same deal with birth rates and immigration. Instead of taking money from the rich to enable more native births we import cheap/exploitable labor. The wealthy don’t bear the cost but reap the benefits. And they’ll hand wave some trickle down economics argument about GDP going up to say we all benefit. Same exact logic as increasing everyone’s rates due to datacenter demand.
  - jakelazaroff 1y ago
    To be clear: the issue is not the immigration itself but that we allow wealthy people and corporations to exploit immigrants, right?
  - vkou 1y ago
    > taking money from the rich to enable more native births Wealthier, more cohesive and communal and less-unequal societies, with better education and medical and child care support across the world have dramatically fewer native births than the US. Unless you're planning on forcing women to have children at gunpoint[1], or banning all forms of contraception[2], or making everyone stupid and poor[3], there doesn't seem to any way to raise birthrates in industrialized societies. Exploitation of migrant/temporary/undocumented workers is a separate problem. --- [1][2][3] These do seem to all be on the roadmap for people whose political sails are most closely aligned with nativist anxieties. And I have not a drop of tolerance for any of them.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- NekkoDroid 1y ago
  Socialize the cost, privatize the profits. That has been The American Way and will for the forseeable future remain that way. Neither party is really interested in fixing it, just one of them is less inclined in furthering it as much as the other.
  - supportengineer 1y ago
    Be an executive or shareholder, or be gone with you
Analemma_ 1y ago
Not all of these increasing costs are datacenter-related. Utilities really did systematically underinvest in infrastructure during the 2005-2020 period when US per-capita electricity use was basically flat, and the incoming expenses due to climate change plus a big reorientation towards solar/wind-- which needs a very different grid-- are real. But I agree the closed-door deals with datacenter operators need to end, as well as the discounts/tax breaks for opening new ones. The "jobs" justification for these is a joke: datacenters create a couple dozen mediocre jobs in the area, and hundreds of well-paid ones way off in Silicon Valley. California reaps the rewards of you wrecking your own revenue base.
- danans 1y ago
  > The "jobs" justification for these is a joke: datacenters create a couple dozen mediocre jobs in the area, and hundreds of well-paid ones way off in Silicon Valley. California reaps the rewards of you wrecking your own revenue base. Silicon Valley != California Wall Street and its associated global oligarchy reap the rewards, not the average Californian, who pays the costs via higher climate change risks, insurance costs, and energy costs.
  - somanyphotons 1y ago
    Its the thin strip of real estate owners along the San Francisco to San Jose corridor who reap all the rewards
    - danans 1y ago
      > Its the thin strip of real estate owners along the San Francisco to San Jose corridor who reap all the rewards They reap a lot, but hardly all the rewards. Per capita the majority goes to VCs and the C-suite, and their wall street comrades.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
throwaway313313 1y ago
Ah well, in reality the utilities try to raise the rates as much as they think they can get away with each year (they are limited only by what the respective state public utilities commissions allow), and this provides a convenient justification.
vkou 1y ago
> It would seem to me that the datacenters in question should be bearing the entire cost of the increase. Anything else is just subsidizing someone's business. The utilities are there to serve the people, So, in a market economy, shortages and price increases don't just hit the marginal buyer. I'm not sure why electricity prices should behave as you describe, but, say, gasoline prices should not.
- pkulak 1y ago
  Very true. I guess, in this case, we'd all like to see it divert from a perfectly free market. We manage capitalism in a million other places; it wouldn't be totally out of line. And it wouldn't be like rent control in NYC, or something else that distorts entire economies and ruins markets.
  - vkou 1y ago
    There are far stronger arguments for rent price control, due to artificially constrained supply, power asymmetry, and cost of switching vendors, than there are for commodity price control.
    - pkulak 1y ago
      > artificially constrained supply Rent control artificially constrains supply... > power asymmetry This, and its cousin "information asymmetry" are generally applied to negotiations. Are you implying that housing isn't a fair market because landlords know so much more about their property than the buyers, and that price controls can solve that? I don't even think I agree with the premise, let alone the solution. > cost of switching vendors Sure, but price controls don't solve this. If you don't want the renter to shoulder the cost of moving, you make the landlord reimburse them for moving expenses, just like lots of cities do right now.
      - vkou 1y ago
        Rent control doesn't make existing apartments get beamed up onto the Starship Enterprise, and supply of housing isn't primarily constrained by it. It's constrained by a lot of other things, and maybe when those other barriers are removed, and a bunch of houses get built, it might start being constrained by this one. But that's not where we are today. I imply that the market is imbalanced because someone not having a place to live for a month is homeless, while a landlord not having a tenant for a month is a multi-millionaire who is out a few thousand bucks. This wouldn't matter in markets with reasonable vacancy rates, but in markets with unhealthily-low vacancy rates, tenants have to eat whatever shit that trickles down to them, because they can't go somewhere else. This should all be obvious to anyone who rents. > Sure, but price controls don't solve this. Not directly, no, but cost of switching (for both tenant and landlord) is a reason for why rental markets are quite weird, compared to commodity ones.
solatic 1y ago
> The utilities are there to serve the people Are they owned by a democratically elected government? Do their profits return to the public purse? No? Then they don't exist to serve the people. They exist to serve their customers. As the public slowly switches to self-owned electric generation (i.e. rooftop solar + home batteries), the distinction between "the public" and "their customers" will increase. It's an important distinction also because people need to remember that one of the reasons why it is difficult to on-line new generation is because of the bureaucracy put in place by that government which supposedly serves the people.
- cogman10 1y ago
  > Are they owned by a democratically elected government? Depends on the utility, some of them are. > the bureaucracy put in place by that government which supposedly serves the people. It cuts both ways. There's obviously a problem with utility boards not listening to the voice of the people they represent but on the flip side these boards have been important brakes on utility companies going crazy with their prices.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Utilities aren't public projects, but they do have a fairly strict fiat. They are granted a monopoly by the elected government (and regulated by all that overhead). In return, they need to make sure they serve the constituency.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Electrical utilities are regulated and governed by public utility commissions or other consumer advocates in all but a few states. https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/21475F72-1866-DAAC-99FB-1E3EE0593D06 https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/21475F72-1866-DAAC-99FB-1E3EE0593...
  - solatic 1y ago
    That doesn't make them public companies or ensure that they serve the public interest; it ensures that they cannot abuse their natural monopoly. Placing handcuffs on someone to prevent them from abusing others is not the same as someone who loves you. Examples that serve the public interest: charities, many non-profits Other examples of private companies that are constrained against abusing their power (apart from the obvious other utilities like gas and water): automobile manufacturers did not add seatbelts and airbags out of the goodness of their hearts, nor did they voluntarily improve fuel efficiency. New York City landlords are prevented from raising rents on rent-controlled apartments, in spite of how much they would like to. Factories that would love to pollute our rivers and streams... the list goes on forever.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 1y ago
Show up to local planning meetings to impair the attempts to locate these in your area. Elect reps who will block them, and recall those who allow them. https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report > In Cascade Locks, Oregon, voters recalled two Port Authority officials in June 2023 for supporting a $100 million data center project from Roadhouse Digital. Following the recall election, the new board canceled the data center project in July 2023. > In Warrenton, Virginia, residents voted out all town council members who supported Amazon’s proposed data center in the November 2024 election. The newly elected council, composed entirely of project opponents, now has the mandate to block the data center.
- morngn 1y ago
  But if it gets built one town over wouldn’t that be a double whammy: higher energy prices and no tax revenue to offset that increase? Seems like prisoners’ dilemma.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    You can only control what you can control. Default to action. The tax revenue and jobs are immaterial, based on the evidence. You don't have to apply pressure forever, just until we're past the worst of the hype cycle.
    - bigbuppo 1y ago
      It's always 1000* jobs. * that's 1000 during construction, it's actually lights-out facility
michaelt 1y ago
IMHO the problem is: OpenAI wants 3000W to run a high-end multi-GPU server to serve 1000 users paying $20/month each. They've got $20,000/month of income from the server, if they can power it. Grandma wants 3000W to run her central AC, so she can live comfortably in Phoenix, Arizona. She's got $2,300/month of pension income. If you try to raise the per-kWh price of electricity to reduce demand, OpenAI won't be the ones who get priced out. It'll be Grandma.
- gambiting 1y ago
  Every utility in the world does separate business and residential rates for this very reason.
  - bagels 1y ago
    And they charge business 1/4 the rate!
    - gambiting 1y ago
      Do they? Here in the UK it's been a huge problem for years now that residential rates have been locked to basically ~25p/kWh, but businesses have been paying 3 or 4 times that, it bankrupted so many places when their monthly bills literally went from like 2k a month to 8k a month. It's the reason why charging a car at home is so much cheaper than at public charging stations, they just cannot get the same rates since they are classed as businesses.
      - azinman2 1y ago
        Opposite in the US
        kelseyfrog 1y ago
        Can I incorporate in order to take advantage of the reduced rate?
supportengineer 1y ago
LOL what? The purpose of the utility is to maximize grift. The CEO, C-Suite, and shareholders get paid. You're just there to be sheared.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
golergka 1y ago
That’s not how supply and demand work
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  Public utilities are Public Utilities. Quasi monopolies treated differently and operated outside of 'supply and demand' capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility
  - golergka 1y ago
    Prescriptive vs descriptive. I see absolutely no reason why public utilities shouldn’t operate on exactly the same principles, and I see plenty from real world examples on why they actually should.
    - bigbuppo 1y ago
      Texas? Spain?
    - anticensor 1y ago
      Because it would be severely inefficient if operated that way.
eagerpace 1y ago
Surely this is an extreme use case, but do individuals get to choose which companies get access to power? The same could be said about any business. And the same could be said about any consumable resource. It’s a slippery slope.
rufus_foreman 1y ago
>> The utilities are there to serve the people Data centers are people, my friend.
varenc 1y ago
That makes sense in terms of fairness. But if the utilities are a capitalistic business selling a limited resource (energy), and FB/OAI are willing to pay a higher price for it, then it affects the price for everyone.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  Public utilities are.... public utilities. That is a specific thing that is not a standard 'capitalistic business'. They can't operate without special concessions/allowances. They can't be severed, but the 'squeeze every penny types' have severed the generation from the grid as if they two are separate, and allowed the 'generators' to behavior as it they aren't tied to a Public Utility grid.

by tw04 1y ago

linotype 1y ago

Subsidizing big business and the rich is the American way. Just look at how much money we spend on the old vs the young.

aiaisiskbs 1y ago
Yep, same deal with birth rates and immigration. Instead of taking money from the rich to enable more native births we import cheap/exploitable labor. The wealthy don’t bear the cost but reap the benefits. And they’ll hand wave some trickle down economics argument about GDP going up to say we all benefit. Same exact logic as increasing everyone’s rates due to datacenter demand.
- jakelazaroff 1y ago
  To be clear: the issue is not the immigration itself but that we allow wealthy people and corporations to exploit immigrants, right?
- vkou 1y ago
  > taking money from the rich to enable more native births Wealthier, more cohesive and communal and less-unequal societies, with better education and medical and child care support across the world have dramatically fewer native births than the US. Unless you're planning on forcing women to have children at gunpoint[1], or banning all forms of contraception[2], or making everyone stupid and poor[3], there doesn't seem to any way to raise birthrates in industrialized societies. Exploitation of migrant/temporary/undocumented workers is a separate problem. --- [1][2][3] These do seem to all be on the roadmap for people whose political sails are most closely aligned with nativist anxieties. And I have not a drop of tolerance for any of them.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
NekkoDroid 1y ago
Socialize the cost, privatize the profits. That has been The American Way and will for the forseeable future remain that way. Neither party is really interested in fixing it, just one of them is less inclined in furthering it as much as the other.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  Be an executive or shareholder, or be gone with you

Analemma_ 1y ago

Not all of these increasing costs are datacenter-related. Utilities really did systematically underinvest in infrastructure during the 2005-2020 period when US per-capita electricity use was basically flat, and the incoming expenses due to climate change plus a big reorientation towards solar/wind-- which needs a very different grid-- are real. But I agree the closed-door deals with datacenter operators need to end, as well as the discounts/tax breaks for opening new ones. The "jobs" justification for these is a joke: datacenters create a couple dozen mediocre jobs in the area, and hundreds of well-paid ones way off in Silicon Valley. California reaps the rewards of you wrecking your own revenue base.

danans 1y ago
> The "jobs" justification for these is a joke: datacenters create a couple dozen mediocre jobs in the area, and hundreds of well-paid ones way off in Silicon Valley. California reaps the rewards of you wrecking your own revenue base. Silicon Valley != California Wall Street and its associated global oligarchy reap the rewards, not the average Californian, who pays the costs via higher climate change risks, insurance costs, and energy costs.
- somanyphotons 1y ago
  Its the thin strip of real estate owners along the San Francisco to San Jose corridor who reap all the rewards
  - danans 1y ago
    > Its the thin strip of real estate owners along the San Francisco to San Jose corridor who reap all the rewards They reap a lot, but hardly all the rewards. Per capita the majority goes to VCs and the C-suite, and their wall street comrades.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

throwaway313313 1y ago

Ah well, in reality the utilities try to raise the rates as much as they think they can get away with each year (they are limited only by what the respective state public utilities commissions allow), and this provides a convenient justification.

vkou 1y ago

> It would seem to me that the datacenters in question should be bearing the entire cost of the increase. Anything else is just subsidizing someone's business. The utilities are there to serve the people, So, in a market economy, shortages and price increases don't just hit the marginal buyer. I'm not sure why electricity prices should behave as you describe, but, say, gasoline prices should not.

pkulak 1y ago
Very true. I guess, in this case, we'd all like to see it divert from a perfectly free market. We manage capitalism in a million other places; it wouldn't be totally out of line. And it wouldn't be like rent control in NYC, or something else that distorts entire economies and ruins markets.
- vkou 1y ago
  There are far stronger arguments for rent price control, due to artificially constrained supply, power asymmetry, and cost of switching vendors, than there are for commodity price control.
  - pkulak 1y ago
    > artificially constrained supply Rent control artificially constrains supply... > power asymmetry This, and its cousin "information asymmetry" are generally applied to negotiations. Are you implying that housing isn't a fair market because landlords know so much more about their property than the buyers, and that price controls can solve that? I don't even think I agree with the premise, let alone the solution. > cost of switching vendors Sure, but price controls don't solve this. If you don't want the renter to shoulder the cost of moving, you make the landlord reimburse them for moving expenses, just like lots of cities do right now.
    - vkou 1y ago
      Rent control doesn't make existing apartments get beamed up onto the Starship Enterprise, and supply of housing isn't primarily constrained by it. It's constrained by a lot of other things, and maybe when those other barriers are removed, and a bunch of houses get built, it might start being constrained by this one. But that's not where we are today. I imply that the market is imbalanced because someone not having a place to live for a month is homeless, while a landlord not having a tenant for a month is a multi-millionaire who is out a few thousand bucks. This wouldn't matter in markets with reasonable vacancy rates, but in markets with unhealthily-low vacancy rates, tenants have to eat whatever shit that trickles down to them, because they can't go somewhere else. This should all be obvious to anyone who rents. > Sure, but price controls don't solve this. Not directly, no, but cost of switching (for both tenant and landlord) is a reason for why rental markets are quite weird, compared to commodity ones.

solatic 1y ago

> The utilities are there to serve the people Are they owned by a democratically elected government? Do their profits return to the public purse? No? Then they don't exist to serve the people. They exist to serve their customers. As the public slowly switches to self-owned electric generation (i.e. rooftop solar + home batteries), the distinction between "the public" and "their customers" will increase. It's an important distinction also because people need to remember that one of the reasons why it is difficult to on-line new generation is because of the bureaucracy put in place by that government which supposedly serves the people.

cogman10 1y ago
> Are they owned by a democratically elected government? Depends on the utility, some of them are. > the bureaucracy put in place by that government which supposedly serves the people. It cuts both ways. There's obviously a problem with utility boards not listening to the voice of the people they represent but on the flip side these boards have been important brakes on utility companies going crazy with their prices.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Utilities aren't public projects, but they do have a fairly strict fiat. They are granted a monopoly by the elected government (and regulated by all that overhead). In return, they need to make sure they serve the constituency.
toomuchtodo 1y ago
Electrical utilities are regulated and governed by public utility commissions or other consumer advocates in all but a few states. https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/21475F72-1866-DAAC-99FB-1E3EE0593D06 https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/21475F72-1866-DAAC-99FB-1E3EE0593...
- solatic 1y ago
  That doesn't make them public companies or ensure that they serve the public interest; it ensures that they cannot abuse their natural monopoly. Placing handcuffs on someone to prevent them from abusing others is not the same as someone who loves you. Examples that serve the public interest: charities, many non-profits Other examples of private companies that are constrained against abusing their power (apart from the obvious other utilities like gas and water): automobile manufacturers did not add seatbelts and airbags out of the goodness of their hearts, nor did they voluntarily improve fuel efficiency. New York City landlords are prevented from raising rents on rent-controlled apartments, in spite of how much they would like to. Factories that would love to pollute our rivers and streams... the list goes on forever.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

toomuchtodo 1y ago

Show up to local planning meetings to impair the attempts to locate these in your area. Elect reps who will block them, and recall those who allow them. https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report > In Cascade Locks, Oregon, voters recalled two Port Authority officials in June 2023 for supporting a $100 million data center project from Roadhouse Digital. Following the recall election, the new board canceled the data center project in July 2023. > In Warrenton, Virginia, residents voted out all town council members who supported Amazon’s proposed data center in the November 2024 election. The newly elected council, composed entirely of project opponents, now has the mandate to block the data center.

morngn 1y ago
But if it gets built one town over wouldn’t that be a double whammy: higher energy prices and no tax revenue to offset that increase? Seems like prisoners’ dilemma.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  You can only control what you can control. Default to action. The tax revenue and jobs are immaterial, based on the evidence. You don't have to apply pressure forever, just until we're past the worst of the hype cycle.
  - bigbuppo 1y ago
    It's always 1000* jobs. * that's 1000 during construction, it's actually lights-out facility

michaelt 1y ago

IMHO the problem is: OpenAI wants 3000W to run a high-end multi-GPU server to serve 1000 users paying $20/month each. They've got $20,000/month of income from the server, if they can power it. Grandma wants 3000W to run her central AC, so she can live comfortably in Phoenix, Arizona. She's got $2,300/month of pension income. If you try to raise the per-kWh price of electricity to reduce demand, OpenAI won't be the ones who get priced out. It'll be Grandma.

gambiting 1y ago
Every utility in the world does separate business and residential rates for this very reason.
- bagels 1y ago
  And they charge business 1/4 the rate!
  - gambiting 1y ago
    Do they? Here in the UK it's been a huge problem for years now that residential rates have been locked to basically ~25p/kWh, but businesses have been paying 3 or 4 times that, it bankrupted so many places when their monthly bills literally went from like 2k a month to 8k a month. It's the reason why charging a car at home is so much cheaper than at public charging stations, they just cannot get the same rates since they are classed as businesses.
    - azinman2 1y ago
      Opposite in the US
      - kelseyfrog 1y ago
        Can I incorporate in order to take advantage of the reduced rate?

supportengineer 1y ago

LOL what? The purpose of the utility is to maximize grift. The CEO, C-Suite, and shareholders get paid. You're just there to be sheared.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

golergka 1y ago

That’s not how supply and demand work

_DeadFred_ 1y ago
Public utilities are Public Utilities. Quasi monopolies treated differently and operated outside of 'supply and demand' capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility
- golergka 1y ago
  Prescriptive vs descriptive. I see absolutely no reason why public utilities shouldn’t operate on exactly the same principles, and I see plenty from real world examples on why they actually should.
  - bigbuppo 1y ago
    Texas? Spain?
  - anticensor 1y ago
    Because it would be severely inefficient if operated that way.

eagerpace 1y ago

Surely this is an extreme use case, but do individuals get to choose which companies get access to power? The same could be said about any business. And the same could be said about any consumable resource. It’s a slippery slope.

rufus_foreman 1y ago

>> The utilities are there to serve the people Data centers are people, my friend.

varenc 1y ago

That makes sense in terms of fairness. But if the utilities are a capitalistic business selling a limited resource (energy), and FB/OAI are willing to pay a higher price for it, then it affects the price for everyone.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago
Public utilities are.... public utilities. That is a specific thing that is not a standard 'capitalistic business'. They can't operate without special concessions/allowances. They can't be severed, but the 'squeeze every penny types' have severed the generation from the grid as if they two are separate, and allowed the 'generators' to behavior as it they aren't tied to a Public Utility grid.