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County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

427 points by 01-_- 4mo ago

cdrnsf 4mo ago
Unplug the data centers instead.
markvdb 4mo ago
Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.
- jeffbee 4mo ago
  Yes, absolutely. This memo implies that with the same measures they could have saved 80% of the amount, regardless of the rate change. If that is significant they should have done this long ago.
- JohnFen 4mo ago
  True. But asking schools to conserve electricity while encouraging data centers to waste it is perverse.
- ben_w 4mo ago
  In much the same way that letting a fart out makes sense even when you're in a hurricane. The list they give is overwhelmingly dominated by one item: “Turn off your lights when leaving your workspace, including when you leave for the day. Turn off your computers/laptops at the end of each workday. If your workspace has windows, adjust the blinds to manage heat from sunlight. Unplug any appliances, chargers, or other electrical items when they are not in use. Please limit use of (or refrain altogether from using) space heaters. A typical space heater alone can cost the county from $150 to $300 per year in electricity costs.” Lights, these days, are going to be in the order of 10 W. A space heater, 1000-3000. $20 of AI tokens over a month? Probably somewhere between, on average, 40-320 W, depending on how you weight the cost of training and which recent-ish model you're using. Tokenmaxxers? They're the heavy users. $2k/month (or whatever) gets you a lot of electricity through those GPUs.
jeffbee 4mo ago
Virginia (Dominion) electric rates went up dramatically, and are now in the same rough price band as 29 other states, because they were well below average. Important context, in my humble opinion.
- gedy 4mo ago
  We can't leave money on the table for all those below average prices - so let's raise them all to the average... oh wait
  - genewitch 4mo ago
    Is this why median is usually better when discussing things, since the median may not change at all or may go down in this circumstance? obviously the average goes up in this circumstance...
scottndecker 4mo ago
If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.
- burnte 4mo ago
  Billionaries are willing to have us make that sacrifice!
- skeeter2020 4mo ago
  not to mention you'll get much farther, faster & easier with timers on the lights than some sort of 100% voluntary participation dream.
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have
    - fluorinerocket 4mo ago
      Yes there are a bunch of terrible ideas in this thread. Video camera controlled lights? Yes f privacy of everyone to save a few bucks? well I think that was sarcastic Motion controlled lights are always timed badly, incredibly annoying to have them switch off when you are sitting still working or taking a duece. How about the janitor shuts off the lights after everyone goes home?
      - dylan604 4mo ago
        There's something to be said about having lights on in a room that is not occupied the entire time the lights are on. Before LED lighting, it was a decent attempt at reducing unnecessary lighting.
      - 4mo ago
preinheimer 4mo ago
You want to use a lot of electricity? Great! We sell electricity. We will need cash in advance to handle some upgrades, rather than passing those costs on to other rate payers.
- jimmydddd 4mo ago
  Exactly! Everyone's been conditioned that Data Centers = higher electric bills for residents. Of course, another option is for politicians to put any added costs on the data center companies. One tech guy even proposed, in order to gain wider acceptance, having the data center companies pay the whole electric bill for the town, so that data centers = 0 electric bills for residents.
  - mwigdahl 4mo ago
    Was that tech guy a crypto miner by chance?
- advisedwang 4mo ago
  Power companies don't want to turn away customers in order to keep prices LOW! If you want that outcome, you need a government intervention (which could be laws around utility pricing, requirments for DC buildout etc)
- Tangurena2 4mo ago
  My state almost passed one such bill this year. Lobbyists got it put in time-out until this year's legislative session ran out.
- nonethewiser 4mo ago
  Isnt that what virgina did in the new rate class this article mentions? Data centers have to enter long term contracts with minimums (regardless of usage) to help power companies plan ahead. https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/dominion-energy-rate-hikes-approved-scc/?ref=404media.co https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/dominion-energy-rate...
- whimsicalism 4mo ago
arjie 4mo ago
Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.
- cmiles8 4mo ago
  Well I think the problem there is called “welcome to California.”
- Quinner 4mo ago
  That's because San Francisco subsidizes the rest of the state, PG&E is a state-wide utility. San Francisco is attempting to run its own utility, but is meeting resistance from PG&E and the parts of the state SF subsidizes.
  - downrightmike 4mo ago
    public infrastructure should be owned by the public
  - larkost 4mo ago
    I live in the Bay Area, and I think this needs a little more exploration. You are correct both in that PG&E spreads the costs around the state, and that San Francisco (and a number of other Bay Area cities) is exploring creating it's own utility and removing itself from PG&E (like Palo Alto already has done). It is a near certainty that power rates would be cheaper for these cities if they removed themselves from the PG&E pool. Right now they look to be on the hook to help pay for all of the (long deferred) power line under-grounding that the recent state wildfires have proven is necessary. Much of that under-grounding is to get power into remote locations, and does nothing for most people (other than the implicit reduction of wildfires, which is a complicated subject). But there is a second side to that coin: without the big cities full of people (which are relatively cheap to service), all of the needed under grounding costs are going to fall to rural California areas, and they simply don't have the population or finances to pay for that. Personally I am in favor of some mixture. I would make the utilities all completely non-profit, with no investors to demand returns (the current system has perverse incentives). I would also start looking at some drastic limitations on where the public pays for power lines. Yes that would make some rural locations financial impossible to draw power to, but that would probably be a part of a real-plolitik re-evaluation of where people can afford to live. This is probably going to line up pretty closely with pushing people out of fire-prone places that should also be pretty much un-insurable anyways.
cmiles8 4mo ago
Do we scale back AI slop for a few days or pull power back from schools? Easy, kids can suffer, give them some ice water. The AI bubble can’t pop soon enough.
- gadflyinyoureye 4mo ago
  Maybe it would help remove useless and harmful tech from schools. Books don't need batteries.
  - galleywest200 4mo ago
    Seems AI use at younger ages has detrimental effects. Let’s remove that from schools while we are at it.
    - gadflyinyoureye 4mo ago
      I'm all for that. Start to add tools as the brain can work.
- mrweasel 4mo ago
  If we took the money Accenture spends on tokens so that their staff can convert PDFs to presentations(1) we can probably fund a school or two. 1) https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/ https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies...
rdtsc 4mo ago
The ~spice~ inference must flow. Some of the data centers now run disconnected on gas turbines 24/7, which is better for electricity prices but they can be big nuisance for people living nearby.
- rho138 4mo ago
  In more ways than one: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus...
- culi 4mo ago
  It is also often a violation of the Clean Air Act but we don't have good regulation in place to actually hold them accountable
  - kube-system 4mo ago
    And SCOTUS just today made a ruling that will increase money in politics, so it's not going to get better any time soon.
- downrightmike 4mo ago
  excess pollution and noise are more than a nuisance
zamadatix 4mo ago
I think the issues are exacerbated by the US going from "regular growth in electricity generation" for decades to "dead flat" for the last ~2 decades. I think we're finding generation isn't just a switch you turn on and reap the benefits of overnight if it's not what you were already planning on doing https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e33d8047-4762-40a0-b19d-34343e3a6953_1960x1152.png https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e... Part of solving that may be in what the article touches on - how to get the generation built before the DC shows up rather than as a promise after.
malshe 4mo ago
Maybe the county could just ask its employees to work from home so that its office electricity bill goes down to zero. A win-win solution!
jonas21 4mo ago
This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on electricity prices in the US [1] and found that most of the rate increase in Virginia was attributable to the VCEA, and that load growth had a mitigating effect on price increases. If you look at the overall report (not just Virginia), the places where electricty costs are rising the fastest are generally not the same places where lots of new datacenters are being built. It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here. [1] https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-trends https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-...
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no. It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer in some way to enable (through increased rates or risk of blackouts), when they have very little positive impact for everyone except a small minority investing in them. > It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are a lot of factors at play here. It is because they are the problem. We need as much clean energy as quickly as possible to mitigate climate change, we do not need data centers, broadly speaking. (if you replaced all of the farmland/ag land, the size of the state of Oregon, harvested for ethanol with solar, you would have more electrical generation than all current US electrical generation combined as of this comment; this is simply a question of will, proven by China's solar PV deployment rates [installing ~90-100GW of solar PV per month])
  - Kamq 4mo ago
    Their post said that load growth had a mitigating effect on prices. Not letting the data centers come online would, presumably, result in higher prices. That seems slightly weird, but that sounds like there's some large fixed costs that they can spread over the entire subscriber base, so the extra data centers are picking up some of those fixed costs.
jabroni_salad 4mo ago
The text of the article indicates that the county government sent this message to all government facilities, but I suppose that doesn't make for quite as sexy a headline and a public school is technically a government facility. I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world for them to illuminate that we don't need to do this?
- philipwhiuk 4mo ago
  > I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world Like 37 data centres in a small rural county?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - khuey 4mo ago
    This is suburban Richmond, not a "small rural county".
    - BenjiWiebe 4mo ago
      Just to compare it to my rural county: Henrico county: pop 345,000, 237 sq miles, 1455 population per sq mile Marion county: pop 11,600, 954 sq miles, 12 pop/sq mi. So it might be a small county but it sure ain't rural!
  - toast0 4mo ago
    It's not that rural, it's in the Richmond Metro Area. A quick look at satellite view shows suburbia, not rural, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some parts of the county with larger lots. Virginia has good connectivity for data centers, so I'm not surprised there's lots on the outskirts of their capital. I bet they've got at least 37 warehouses too. The whole thing seems pretty overblown: County where energy prices are up 25% sends a memo asking employees to conserve electricity doesn't seem worth writing about. If prices are up 25%, I bet the datacenter guys are also working on efficiency. The county isn't asking datacenter peeps to conserve energy, because the county isn't paying their electricity bill. From the headline, I thought this was going to be schools that signed up to participate in demand response in return for reduced electric rates are being asked to reduce their demand. Growing up in socal, most of the schools were on demand response programs, and sometimes we'd have reduced lighting as a result. I wouldn't expect a lot of datacenters to participate in demand response programs, so the angle would be 'the schools have to turn off their lights, but the datacenters don't do anything' ... ignoring the cost savings the schools signed up for; some datacenters could participate though --- large operators can move traffic and shutdown, idle or limit power for most of the servers, or can switch to local generation; but facilities for small hosting / colocation probably don't have enough insight into their customer loads to move traffic and might not want to run their generators.
deleted 4mo ago
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freediddy 4mo ago
The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.
- WarmWash 4mo ago
  Consumers should consider cancelling their AI subscriptions if they don't like datacenters.
  - slg 4mo ago
    Most consumers don't have any AI subscriptions. Lots of people's primary experience of AI is it being forced on them through integration into existing products and services, more "greed and hubris".
    - genewitch 4mo ago
      i, an avid AI user, have never paid a subscription, as a point of data!
      - platevoltage 4mo ago
        The day I'm force to pay for it, I'll stop using it.
    - Legend2440 4mo ago
      Most consumers are willingly using AI. But they're using the free versions. ChatGPT is the #1 most popular app on the app store, with nearly a billion weekly active users.
  - mywittyname 4mo ago
    Most people don't have AI subscriptions. A lot of the most fervent detractor hate AI to the core and refuse to use it as much as possible. Perhaps we should charge AI subscription "tax" to pay for more renewable energy.
ck2 4mo ago
"ai" bubble burst cannot come soon enough but sure would be nice if it would cause an exponential acceleration of fusion development in the meanwhile however that still has a law of theromodynamics problem of pumping heat into atmosphere maybe exponential advancement of solar but they've already figured out that cannot improve more than another several percent, and manufacturing is already near peak efficiency
nok22kon 4mo ago
a few years from now they will advise people to stop eating so much, since they need the farmland for data centers
square_usual 4mo ago
This is insane reporting. Their own article says the data center buildout happened in 2017. The article they link about it says the same thing. And so rate changes now - in 2026, nearly a full decade after those DCs were built out - are somehow the fault of the measly 37 datacenters there? They don't even say that outright - they're just insinuating this from the title and wording in the artcile to be sneaky about it. This is garbage! They just put "$current_thing bad" in the headline and nobody's really checking that they're straight up lying by omission!
arlattimore 4mo ago
I'm confused as to why they've allowed the data center power drain (which they knew was going to happen) to cascade into consumer power prices. Surely they should be charging consumers their existing price and charging the data centers an increased price based on their massive usage. Without some sort of mitigation, the costs keep rising and it'll drive families away from these cities and/or counties to avoid the cost hikes. This is akin to what we're seeing in a lot of major cities with rent, people are living further and further away from where they work, paying taxes in other forms (time, public transport costs, gas costs for their car inc. wear & tear, etc). Hardly seems fair or right.
- shimman 4mo ago
  You're confused why neoliberals want to give out more corporate welfare over helping citizens material needs? This is literally what they believe in. This is what they have been doing for nearly 50 years. It's the entire purpose of neoliberalism: corporations are more important than citizens.
- whimsicalism 4mo ago
  This is just what happens with a demand shock in any context.
deleted 4mo ago
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Ritewut 4mo ago
This is back to the propaganda that people need to recycle because big companies dont want to clean up after themselves.
nerdralph 4mo ago
The article didn't include the actual power rates. I think the applicable tariff is $3.316/kW of demand + 16.82c/kWh. https://www.scc.virginia.gov/docketsearch/DOCS/89pc01!.PDF https://www.scc.virginia.gov/docketsearch/DOCS/89pc01!.PDF Compared to my local utility (and most of Canada), the demand charge is low, but the per kWh charge is high. NSPower's general tariff is $9.089/kW + 15.738c/kWh for the first 200/mth, and 12.674c/kWh after that. Equivalent rates in Quebec and Manitoba are about half that. https://www.nspower.ca/your-business/save-money-energy/business-rates https://www.nspower.ca/your-business/save-money-energy/busin... Current CAD/USD is 0.7, so subtract 30% for NSPower's rates in USD.
382hi 4mo ago
archived; no ads no trackers: https://nonogra.ph/county-with-37-data-centers-asks-schools-to-conserve-electricity-06-30-2026 https://nonogra.ph/county-with-37-data-centers-asks-schools-...
whall6 4mo ago
Can someone more up to speed explain to me why with Virginia’s proximity to one of the largest natural gas reservoirs in the world in West Virginia, they don’t just build new power plants to keep up with electricity demand?
Havoc 4mo ago
It's kinda crazy that data centers aren't on some sort of ringfenced scheme. This whole just throw it on the grid and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane
- dmix 4mo ago
  > and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane These companies are investing heavily in new energy development? https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/data-centers-love-solar-heres-a-comprehensive-guide-to-deals-over-100-megawatts/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/data-centers-love-solar-he... > Meta kicked off the year with a 200-megawatt solar deal with multinational electric utility Engie. The purchase went toward a solar farm near one of the company’s existing data centers in Texas. At the time of the deal, Meta already had over 12 gigawatts of generating capacity in its renewable portfolio. > Stargate AI partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Group was reported by Bloomberg to be powered, at least in part, by solar. SB Energy, which is part of SoftBank’s portfolio, is expected to develop solar installations backed by grid-scale batteries. > Meta closed out the month with another massive solar deal, this one with Spanish renewable developer Zelestra. The contract was for 595 megawatts of capacity. > Meta continued its streak in February, investing in a 505-megawatt solar project with Cypress Creek Renewables, which is developing the massive installation in Coleman County, Texas — about 150 miles northwest of Austin. > Microsoft entered the fray in February, too. The company has long been a buyer of renewable energy to power its operations, and added another 389 megawatts of solar in a deal with EDP Renewables North America. > Amazon also made a big purchase, backing a hybrid project on the Iberian Peninsula that includes wind, solar, and pumped-hydroelectric storage. The deal included 476 megawatts total, of which 212 megawatts are solar. > Outside of the U.S., data center operators have also been investing in solar. In India, CtrlS built its own 125-megawatt facility in two phases, the first half of which was finished in June 2024 with the second completed in early February. In South America, Telecom Argentina agreed to buy electricity from a 130-megawatt solar farm developed by MSU Green Energy. > Microsoft added another three solar developments in March, again focusing on the Midwest. The projects span Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri, and they’re being developed by AES. Together, they will provide Microsoft with 475 megawatts of capacity, adding to its considerable 34-gigawatt portfolio. > Cisco got in the game with a 100-megawatt deal with X-Elio, a solar developer owned by Brookfield, an asset manager that has bet big on renewables. The power purchase agreements see Cisco buying capacity from two different Texas solar projects. > Meta added another 200 megawatts of solar to its portfolio in March in a deal with RWE. The solar farm will be built just southeast of Austin. > In Italy, data center operator Data4 signed a 10-year deal with utility Edison Energia to buy power from a 148-megawatt solar farm northwest of Rome. That was all in 2025^ There's also been big investment in nuclear and natural gas https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o
testing22321 4mo ago
Remember when the grid couldn’t support EVs ? , but amazingly it CAN support Data centres… Pepperidge farm remembers
ineedasername 4mo ago
>37 data centers and there are plans to build 17 more, including plans to convert hundreds of acres of _Civil War battlefields_ into data centers. Those poor battlefields. How rarely it is that anyone thinks of their needs.
- Legend2440 4mo ago
  Yeah, it's kinda silly to block development on a patch of ground forever because someone fought over it two centuries ago.
Danox 4mo ago
That's nerve...
helterskelter 4mo ago
This reminds me of WorldCom. One employee said they knew something was up when the company was posting huge profits but the CEO was sending out emails with progressively more extreme electricity saving measures.

427 points by 01-_- 4mo ago

cdrnsf 4mo ago

Unplug the data centers instead.

markvdb 4mo ago

Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.

jeffbee 4mo ago
Yes, absolutely. This memo implies that with the same measures they could have saved 80% of the amount, regardless of the rate change. If that is significant they should have done this long ago.
JohnFen 4mo ago
True. But asking schools to conserve electricity while encouraging data centers to waste it is perverse.
ben_w 4mo ago
In much the same way that letting a fart out makes sense even when you're in a hurricane. The list they give is overwhelmingly dominated by one item: “Turn off your lights when leaving your workspace, including when you leave for the day. Turn off your computers/laptops at the end of each workday. If your workspace has windows, adjust the blinds to manage heat from sunlight. Unplug any appliances, chargers, or other electrical items when they are not in use. Please limit use of (or refrain altogether from using) space heaters. A typical space heater alone can cost the county from $150 to $300 per year in electricity costs.” Lights, these days, are going to be in the order of 10 W. A space heater, 1000-3000. $20 of AI tokens over a month? Probably somewhere between, on average, 40-320 W, depending on how you weight the cost of training and which recent-ish model you're using. Tokenmaxxers? They're the heavy users. $2k/month (or whatever) gets you a lot of electricity through those GPUs.

jeffbee 4mo ago

Virginia (Dominion) electric rates went up dramatically, and are now in the same rough price band as 29 other states, because they were well below average. Important context, in my humble opinion.

gedy 4mo ago
We can't leave money on the table for all those below average prices - so let's raise them all to the average... oh wait
- genewitch 4mo ago
  Is this why median is usually better when discussing things, since the median may not change at all or may go down in this circumstance? obviously the average goes up in this circumstance...

scottndecker 4mo ago

If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.

burnte 4mo ago
Billionaries are willing to have us make that sacrifice!
skeeter2020 4mo ago
not to mention you'll get much farther, faster & easier with timers on the lights than some sort of 100% voluntary participation dream.
- dylan604 4mo ago
  ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have
  - fluorinerocket 4mo ago
    Yes there are a bunch of terrible ideas in this thread. Video camera controlled lights? Yes f privacy of everyone to save a few bucks? well I think that was sarcastic Motion controlled lights are always timed badly, incredibly annoying to have them switch off when you are sitting still working or taking a duece. How about the janitor shuts off the lights after everyone goes home?
    - dylan604 4mo ago
      There's something to be said about having lights on in a room that is not occupied the entire time the lights are on. Before LED lighting, it was a decent attempt at reducing unnecessary lighting.
    - 4mo ago

preinheimer 4mo ago

You want to use a lot of electricity? Great! We sell electricity. We will need cash in advance to handle some upgrades, rather than passing those costs on to other rate payers.

jimmydddd 4mo ago
Exactly! Everyone's been conditioned that Data Centers = higher electric bills for residents. Of course, another option is for politicians to put any added costs on the data center companies. One tech guy even proposed, in order to gain wider acceptance, having the data center companies pay the whole electric bill for the town, so that data centers = 0 electric bills for residents.
- mwigdahl 4mo ago
  Was that tech guy a crypto miner by chance?
advisedwang 4mo ago
Power companies don't want to turn away customers in order to keep prices LOW! If you want that outcome, you need a government intervention (which could be laws around utility pricing, requirments for DC buildout etc)
Tangurena2 4mo ago
My state almost passed one such bill this year. Lobbyists got it put in time-out until this year's legislative session ran out.
nonethewiser 4mo ago
Isnt that what virgina did in the new rate class this article mentions? Data centers have to enter long term contracts with minimums (regardless of usage) to help power companies plan ahead. https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/dominion-energy-rate-hikes-approved-scc/?ref=404media.co https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/dominion-energy-rate...
whimsicalism 4mo ago

arjie 4mo ago

Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.

cmiles8 4mo ago
Well I think the problem there is called “welcome to California.”
Quinner 4mo ago
That's because San Francisco subsidizes the rest of the state, PG&E is a state-wide utility. San Francisco is attempting to run its own utility, but is meeting resistance from PG&E and the parts of the state SF subsidizes.
- downrightmike 4mo ago
  public infrastructure should be owned by the public
- larkost 4mo ago
  I live in the Bay Area, and I think this needs a little more exploration. You are correct both in that PG&E spreads the costs around the state, and that San Francisco (and a number of other Bay Area cities) is exploring creating it's own utility and removing itself from PG&E (like Palo Alto already has done). It is a near certainty that power rates would be cheaper for these cities if they removed themselves from the PG&E pool. Right now they look to be on the hook to help pay for all of the (long deferred) power line under-grounding that the recent state wildfires have proven is necessary. Much of that under-grounding is to get power into remote locations, and does nothing for most people (other than the implicit reduction of wildfires, which is a complicated subject). But there is a second side to that coin: without the big cities full of people (which are relatively cheap to service), all of the needed under grounding costs are going to fall to rural California areas, and they simply don't have the population or finances to pay for that. Personally I am in favor of some mixture. I would make the utilities all completely non-profit, with no investors to demand returns (the current system has perverse incentives). I would also start looking at some drastic limitations on where the public pays for power lines. Yes that would make some rural locations financial impossible to draw power to, but that would probably be a part of a real-plolitik re-evaluation of where people can afford to live. This is probably going to line up pretty closely with pushing people out of fire-prone places that should also be pretty much un-insurable anyways.

cmiles8 4mo ago

Do we scale back AI slop for a few days or pull power back from schools? Easy, kids can suffer, give them some ice water. The AI bubble can’t pop soon enough.

gadflyinyoureye 4mo ago
Maybe it would help remove useless and harmful tech from schools. Books don't need batteries.
- galleywest200 4mo ago
  Seems AI use at younger ages has detrimental effects. Let’s remove that from schools while we are at it.
  - gadflyinyoureye 4mo ago
    I'm all for that. Start to add tools as the brain can work.
mrweasel 4mo ago
If we took the money Accenture spends on tokens so that their staff can convert PDFs to presentations(1) we can probably fund a school or two. 1) https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/ https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies...

rdtsc 4mo ago

The ~spice~ inference must flow. Some of the data centers now run disconnected on gas turbines 24/7, which is better for electricity prices but they can be big nuisance for people living nearby.

rho138 4mo ago
In more ways than one: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus...
culi 4mo ago
It is also often a violation of the Clean Air Act but we don't have good regulation in place to actually hold them accountable
- kube-system 4mo ago
  And SCOTUS just today made a ruling that will increase money in politics, so it's not going to get better any time soon.
downrightmike 4mo ago
excess pollution and noise are more than a nuisance

zamadatix 4mo ago

I think the issues are exacerbated by the US going from "regular growth in electricity generation" for decades to "dead flat" for the last ~2 decades. I think we're finding generation isn't just a switch you turn on and reap the benefits of overnight if it's not what you were already planning on doing https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e33d8047-4762-40a0-b19d-34343e3a6953_1960x1152.png https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e... Part of solving that may be in what the article touches on - how to get the generation built before the DC shows up rather than as a promise after.

malshe 4mo ago

Maybe the county could just ask its employees to work from home so that its office electricity bill goes down to zero. A win-win solution!

jonas21 4mo ago

This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on electricity prices in the US [1] and found that most of the rate increase in Virginia was attributable to the VCEA, and that load growth had a mitigating effect on price increases. If you look at the overall report (not just Virginia), the places where electricty costs are rising the fastest are generally not the same places where lots of new datacenters are being built. It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here. [1] https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-trends https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-...

toomuchtodo 4mo ago
So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no. It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer in some way to enable (through increased rates or risk of blackouts), when they have very little positive impact for everyone except a small minority investing in them. > It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are a lot of factors at play here. It is because they are the problem. We need as much clean energy as quickly as possible to mitigate climate change, we do not need data centers, broadly speaking. (if you replaced all of the farmland/ag land, the size of the state of Oregon, harvested for ethanol with solar, you would have more electrical generation than all current US electrical generation combined as of this comment; this is simply a question of will, proven by China's solar PV deployment rates [installing ~90-100GW of solar PV per month])
- Kamq 4mo ago
  Their post said that load growth had a mitigating effect on prices. Not letting the data centers come online would, presumably, result in higher prices. That seems slightly weird, but that sounds like there's some large fixed costs that they can spread over the entire subscriber base, so the extra data centers are picking up some of those fixed costs.

jabroni_salad 4mo ago

The text of the article indicates that the county government sent this message to all government facilities, but I suppose that doesn't make for quite as sexy a headline and a public school is technically a government facility. I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world for them to illuminate that we don't need to do this?

philipwhiuk 4mo ago
> I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world Like 37 data centres in a small rural county?
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- khuey 4mo ago
  This is suburban Richmond, not a "small rural county".
  - BenjiWiebe 4mo ago
    Just to compare it to my rural county: Henrico county: pop 345,000, 237 sq miles, 1455 population per sq mile Marion county: pop 11,600, 954 sq miles, 12 pop/sq mi. So it might be a small county but it sure ain't rural!
- toast0 4mo ago
  It's not that rural, it's in the Richmond Metro Area. A quick look at satellite view shows suburbia, not rural, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some parts of the county with larger lots. Virginia has good connectivity for data centers, so I'm not surprised there's lots on the outskirts of their capital. I bet they've got at least 37 warehouses too. The whole thing seems pretty overblown: County where energy prices are up 25% sends a memo asking employees to conserve electricity doesn't seem worth writing about. If prices are up 25%, I bet the datacenter guys are also working on efficiency. The county isn't asking datacenter peeps to conserve energy, because the county isn't paying their electricity bill. From the headline, I thought this was going to be schools that signed up to participate in demand response in return for reduced electric rates are being asked to reduce their demand. Growing up in socal, most of the schools were on demand response programs, and sometimes we'd have reduced lighting as a result. I wouldn't expect a lot of datacenters to participate in demand response programs, so the angle would be 'the schools have to turn off their lights, but the datacenters don't do anything' ... ignoring the cost savings the schools signed up for; some datacenters could participate though --- large operators can move traffic and shutdown, idle or limit power for most of the servers, or can switch to local generation; but facilities for small hosting / colocation probably don't have enough insight into their customer loads to move traffic and might not want to run their generators.

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freediddy 4mo ago

The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.

WarmWash 4mo ago
Consumers should consider cancelling their AI subscriptions if they don't like datacenters.
- slg 4mo ago
  Most consumers don't have any AI subscriptions. Lots of people's primary experience of AI is it being forced on them through integration into existing products and services, more "greed and hubris".
  - genewitch 4mo ago
    i, an avid AI user, have never paid a subscription, as a point of data!
    - platevoltage 4mo ago
      The day I'm force to pay for it, I'll stop using it.
  - Legend2440 4mo ago
    Most consumers are willingly using AI. But they're using the free versions. ChatGPT is the #1 most popular app on the app store, with nearly a billion weekly active users.
- mywittyname 4mo ago
  Most people don't have AI subscriptions. A lot of the most fervent detractor hate AI to the core and refuse to use it as much as possible. Perhaps we should charge AI subscription "tax" to pay for more renewable energy.

ck2 4mo ago

"ai" bubble burst cannot come soon enough but sure would be nice if it would cause an exponential acceleration of fusion development in the meanwhile however that still has a law of theromodynamics problem of pumping heat into atmosphere maybe exponential advancement of solar but they've already figured out that cannot improve more than another several percent, and manufacturing is already near peak efficiency

nok22kon 4mo ago

a few years from now they will advise people to stop eating so much, since they need the farmland for data centers

square_usual 4mo ago

This is insane reporting. Their own article says the data center buildout happened in 2017. The article they link about it says the same thing. And so rate changes now - in 2026, nearly a full decade after those DCs were built out - are somehow the fault of the measly 37 datacenters there? They don't even say that outright - they're just insinuating this from the title and wording in the artcile to be sneaky about it. This is garbage! They just put "$current_thing bad" in the headline and nobody's really checking that they're straight up lying by omission!

arlattimore 4mo ago

I'm confused as to why they've allowed the data center power drain (which they knew was going to happen) to cascade into consumer power prices. Surely they should be charging consumers their existing price and charging the data centers an increased price based on their massive usage. Without some sort of mitigation, the costs keep rising and it'll drive families away from these cities and/or counties to avoid the cost hikes. This is akin to what we're seeing in a lot of major cities with rent, people are living further and further away from where they work, paying taxes in other forms (time, public transport costs, gas costs for their car inc. wear & tear, etc). Hardly seems fair or right.

shimman 4mo ago
You're confused why neoliberals want to give out more corporate welfare over helping citizens material needs? This is literally what they believe in. This is what they have been doing for nearly 50 years. It's the entire purpose of neoliberalism: corporations are more important than citizens.
whimsicalism 4mo ago
This is just what happens with a demand shock in any context.

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Ritewut 4mo ago

This is back to the propaganda that people need to recycle because big companies dont want to clean up after themselves.

nerdralph 4mo ago

The article didn't include the actual power rates. I think the applicable tariff is $3.316/kW of demand + 16.82c/kWh. https://www.scc.virginia.gov/docketsearch/DOCS/89pc01!.PDF https://www.scc.virginia.gov/docketsearch/DOCS/89pc01!.PDF Compared to my local utility (and most of Canada), the demand charge is low, but the per kWh charge is high. NSPower's general tariff is $9.089/kW + 15.738c/kWh for the first 200/mth, and 12.674c/kWh after that. Equivalent rates in Quebec and Manitoba are about half that. https://www.nspower.ca/your-business/save-money-energy/business-rates https://www.nspower.ca/your-business/save-money-energy/busin... Current CAD/USD is 0.7, so subtract 30% for NSPower's rates in USD.

382hi 4mo ago

archived; no ads no trackers: https://nonogra.ph/county-with-37-data-centers-asks-schools-to-conserve-electricity-06-30-2026 https://nonogra.ph/county-with-37-data-centers-asks-schools-...

whall6 4mo ago

Can someone more up to speed explain to me why with Virginia’s proximity to one of the largest natural gas reservoirs in the world in West Virginia, they don’t just build new power plants to keep up with electricity demand?

Havoc 4mo ago

It's kinda crazy that data centers aren't on some sort of ringfenced scheme. This whole just throw it on the grid and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane

dmix 4mo ago
> and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane These companies are investing heavily in new energy development? https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/data-centers-love-solar-heres-a-comprehensive-guide-to-deals-over-100-megawatts/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/data-centers-love-solar-he... > Meta kicked off the year with a 200-megawatt solar deal with multinational electric utility Engie. The purchase went toward a solar farm near one of the company’s existing data centers in Texas. At the time of the deal, Meta already had over 12 gigawatts of generating capacity in its renewable portfolio. > Stargate AI partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Group was reported by Bloomberg to be powered, at least in part, by solar. SB Energy, which is part of SoftBank’s portfolio, is expected to develop solar installations backed by grid-scale batteries. > Meta closed out the month with another massive solar deal, this one with Spanish renewable developer Zelestra. The contract was for 595 megawatts of capacity. > Meta continued its streak in February, investing in a 505-megawatt solar project with Cypress Creek Renewables, which is developing the massive installation in Coleman County, Texas — about 150 miles northwest of Austin. > Microsoft entered the fray in February, too. The company has long been a buyer of renewable energy to power its operations, and added another 389 megawatts of solar in a deal with EDP Renewables North America. > Amazon also made a big purchase, backing a hybrid project on the Iberian Peninsula that includes wind, solar, and pumped-hydroelectric storage. The deal included 476 megawatts total, of which 212 megawatts are solar. > Outside of the U.S., data center operators have also been investing in solar. In India, CtrlS built its own 125-megawatt facility in two phases, the first half of which was finished in June 2024 with the second completed in early February. In South America, Telecom Argentina agreed to buy electricity from a 130-megawatt solar farm developed by MSU Green Energy. > Microsoft added another three solar developments in March, again focusing on the Midwest. The projects span Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri, and they’re being developed by AES. Together, they will provide Microsoft with 475 megawatts of capacity, adding to its considerable 34-gigawatt portfolio. > Cisco got in the game with a 100-megawatt deal with X-Elio, a solar developer owned by Brookfield, an asset manager that has bet big on renewables. The power purchase agreements see Cisco buying capacity from two different Texas solar projects. > Meta added another 200 megawatts of solar to its portfolio in March in a deal with RWE. The solar farm will be built just southeast of Austin. > In Italy, data center operator Data4 signed a 10-year deal with utility Edison Energia to buy power from a 148-megawatt solar farm northwest of Rome. That was all in 2025^ There's also been big investment in nuclear and natural gas https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o

testing22321 4mo ago

Remember when the grid couldn’t support EVs ? , but amazingly it CAN support Data centres… Pepperidge farm remembers

ineedasername 4mo ago

>37 data centers and there are plans to build 17 more, including plans to convert hundreds of acres of _Civil War battlefields_ into data centers. Those poor battlefields. How rarely it is that anyone thinks of their needs.

Legend2440 4mo ago
Yeah, it's kinda silly to block development on a patch of ground forever because someone fought over it two centuries ago.

Danox 4mo ago

That's nerve...

helterskelter 4mo ago

This reminds me of WorldCom. One employee said they knew something was up when the company was posting huge profits but the CEO was sending out emails with progressively more extreme electricity saving measures.