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Electric bill may be paying for big data centers' energy use
- aj7 1y agoMay be?
- charcircuit 1y ago[flagged]
- blitzar 1y agoI breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide for free, maybe Google and Meta can give me a billion dollars for the public benefit I do.
- blibble 1y agoI'm sure the people that won't be able to afford to heat their homes will be thankful they'll be able to generate slop cheaper and faster than ever before
- charcircuit 1y ago[flagged]
- blibble 1y agoI don't think the world needs more people posting shrimp jesus on facebook
- izzydata 1y agoI'd prefer they install a mini datacenter in my basement I can use for free heating.
- crote 1y agoI'm also willing to dump trash into your front yard for free. Should I be getting a subsidy for that?
- charcircuit 1y ago[flagged]
- defrost 1y agoIt's proof of the power of marketing and push from behind inclusion, not necessarily proof of real demand or value. There's a strong case that road traffic increases to meet road building, much as public use of AP expands as AI centres are built and dependencies built into every new bit of IT tat. Labubu dolls are the fastest growing recent fad ..
- charcircuit 1y agoHow can you say this when people are active paying for subscription that are hundreds of dollars per month? >Labubu dolls are the fastest growing recent fad .. People like cute things and people like to gamble. It's not surprising people are getting their fix via something like that.
- defrost 1y ago> How can you say this when people are active paying for subscription that are hundreds of dollars per month? People like cute things and people like to gamble. It's not surprising people are getting their fix via something like that. But that is behavior distinct from real need .. what happens, for example, should AI suddenly disappear for everybody save for a few in, say, code generation or other low population applications? Will the world end?
- charcircuit 1y agoPeople need very little to sustain their life. I don't know why you bare bringing up real need. Electricity isn't a real need either.
- mingus88 1y agoBut socialism is bad
- DaSHacka 1y agoYes, it is indeed possible for two things to be bad at the same time.
- whimsicalism 1y ago> Here’s the problem for consumers: To meet data center demand, utilities are building new power plants and power lines that are needed only because of data center growth. If state regulators allow utilities to follow the standard approach of splitting the costs of new infrastructure among all consumers, the public will end up paying to supply data centers with all that power. I don’t agree with the premise of this article. Of course they will “include these costs” for all ratepayers because the alternative would be Meta (or whoever) just buys all the electricity (or at least a much greater share). Of course ratepayers share in the cost of building new infra because the equilibrium price of electricity has gone up.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoSpeaking of.. aren't most of those public utilities?
- epistasis 1y agoPublic utility Commissions are corrupt with shocking frequency, and Americans just shrug it off without reform. Arizona is notorious for this. It even reached into state legislatures, there was a massive Ohio bribery scandal not too long ago. But there's a lot more that never gets any attention, especially with the death of so much journalism.
- XorNot 1y agoExcept little of that infrastructure is going to serve rate payers at all. The sort of high capacity data center connections being built aren't strengthening or improving the electricity supply for residential consumers - their lines aren't changing, in fact most of the transmission infrastructure is unlikely to be able to serve them at all.
- whimsicalism 1y agomost of the cost here is coming from generation, especially given that these plants are often being colocated with the data center and the companies themselves are oftentimes financing the transmission lines. i agree where possible, transmission costs (and associated liability) should be internalized to the particular consumer (also in residential fire-prone areas).
- charlieyu1 1y agoI guess paying high rates for more usage is too sensible. Here in UK we even have daily standing charges
- aidenn0 1y agoCommercial power nearly always pays a monthly charge based on the peak deliverable power. However, the utility rates are regulated, and the regulators allow the power companies to charge customers more to recoup any capital expenditures. Presumably when demand increases, the utilities increase capex to meet the demand.
- kelnos 1y agoThe utility rates are regulated by people who, in most states, are in the pocket of the utility companies. The public utility commissions of the US are remarkably corrupt.
- gxs 1y agoWe subsidize a lot of things we may not realize Company decides to brick a popular product? Who picks up the landfill tab? Your electricity one is a good example Hell, even RTO - SF offered some pretty nice tax incentives for companies who enforced RTO to “revive” the city. Who pays for this? They did a great job keeping those on the DL I only know because I happened be involved in those conversations on the periphery - it was no coincidence we started an RTO policy right as we got a huge, huge new office
- whimsicalism 1y agoit would be a subsidy to deliver power at below equilibrium price to residents simply because they are residents and not a corporate buyer. raising prices for consumers when demand comes from elsewhere is not a subsidy.
- monsieurbanana 1y agoGiven that the biggest companies never pay their fair share of taxes, it'll be more difficult to point out what we dont't subsidize.
- whimsicalism 1y agowhat is the fair share and why cannot it not just be paid on the individual side by capital gains on share holders or wage income for workers?
- carlob 1y ago> just be paid on the individual side by capital gains When you are rich enough you can just borrow using your wealth as collateral and never incur in capital gains.
- whimsicalism 1y agoagreed but imo this is orthogonal to corporate taxation and needs a mark2market solution, at minimum when an asset is used as collateral.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoHere in Data Center Alley (Virginia) area, the power company Dominion is adding a pretty significant base cost increase (+$10.92) for consumers for this reason. Seemingly with no promises that the generation rate won't also keep shooting up as it has. There's also a push to create a new rate for very big power users, beyond the existing rate that's shared with many industrial/manufacturing users. https://wtop.com/virginia/2025/09/dominion-proposes-higher-utility-rates-for-va-residents-new-rate-class-for-data-centers/ https://wtop.com/virginia/2025/09/dominion-proposes-higher-u... Power rates have been going way up and up for consumers in the area. We're still nowhere near CA levels of absurd, but it sucks a lot seeing the merciless tick up year after year. After being a pretty reasonably priced power area for so long. It sucks feeling like only worse & worse pain is on the way.
- whimsicalism 1y agoi have trouble understanding why the US is the best place for building these data centers, surely it is not the best place to do electricity arbitrage and LLM training and even inference doesn’t need fast networking
- kelnos 1y agoMy guess would be because the US has weak privacy laws. Building in the EU would mean a lot more compliance-y things. Building in developing countries means more stability risk, plus unreliable electricity.
- suresk 1y agoThey also get massive subsidies and tax breaks for building these data centers. They require the negotiations be done in secret and often fight to keep the agreements secret to make it so people don’t flip out when they see how bad they are.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoWho's winning here?
- chaz6 1y agoThe wealthy, as usual.
- exabrial 1y agoSame companies are lecturing you about global warming
- helqn 1y agoThey are just following the script of the elites. They don’t care more than the average Joe.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoArticle from June. [dupe] Recent and related discussions: Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931763 Big Tech's A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44905595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44905595 The U.S. grid is so weak, the AI race may be over https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910562 AI is booming so are household utility bills https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931763
- Cnxvvcb 1y agoBnvn Gj
- AbstractH24 1y agoShould residential properties and industrial properties really compete for the same electricity? This is like a perfect place for the government to step in and create a formula that forces electricity companies to allocate a percentage of their energy to each of these groups. So, demand from manufacturing or data centers does impact the cost of turning on the air conditioning in my home. Great example of where business isn't incentivized to care about the greater good, so government needs to adjust things.