> If they want to tip in some cash or make some kind of deal fantastic. But mandatory? No sense making carve outs for datacenters. The laws in Virginia and Tex

> If they want to tip in some cash or make some kind of deal fantastic. But mandatory? No sense making carve outs for datacenters. The laws in Virginia and Texas are written with respect to load demand, not type of business. There aren't special carve outs for data centers, it just happens that most new high load customers recently are data centers. If voluntary pledges were sufficient to fix the issues - that would be great. But they aren't (see earlier reference outlining the real-world problems), hence the need for regulations. > But no, legally speaking, a business should be able to connect to a common utility. Utilities typically cannot discriminate against customers arbitrarily - although that is more a consequence of being required by regulators to provide universal access, rather than some bill of rights guaranteeing electricity to all businesses. If regulators - who are (indirectly) accountable to the voting public - decide that they want to make some special carve outs specifically targeting data centers, they are probably within their rights legally to do so. (Of course I am not a lawyer - so this is just my opinion based on my limited understanding of how the world works). And this isn't arbitrary discimination. Not all uses of electricity are equal. I think there are a lot of people who would agree it's more important to power a hospital, for example, than a bitcoin mining operation. And it may make sense to prioritize somes uses over others with differing rates, service guarantees, etc. But I tend to think laws like in Virginia and Texas which target all high-load customers are sensible. That's really the root problem as far as the electrical grid is concerned.