3 ms·

Some of it's a panic, but I'm leaning towards many of the concerns being true or at least partially true due to the sheer scale of the construction. The figures

by stryan 1mo ago

Some of it's a panic, but I'm leaning towards many of the concerns being true or at least partially true due to the sheer scale of the construction. The figures I've been seeing are something like half of all current private construction projects are data center related these days and it's the biggest single sector of construction in terms of money spent. It's also a lot easier to protest data centers then AI companies and they generally provide minimal benefits to the local communities (a brief job boom for construction but minimal reoccurring benefits afterwards) and quite a few negatives like power consumption and noise. People can't stop their jobs from replacing them with an LLM, but they can at least stop the local data center from being built and raising the electricity bill by $70 a month[0]. This batch of data center construction is essentially yet another physical representation of the (often negative) changes the general populace faces with AI. [0] $70/month is how much my old power company said they'd have to raise prices if several proposed data centers were built. I was already paying $150-200 a month to power a 1 bed apartment so you can bet your ass I filed a complaint with the county about it.

drfloyd51 1mo ago
Wait… large customers move in and your rate goes up? Forget about it. These AI companies could really help themselves by subsidizing local rates. Imagine if a large AI datacenter moved in AND your rate dropped by $70! Everyone would be singing their praises.
- john_strinlai 1mo ago
  >Wait… large customers move in and your rate goes up? demand goes up + supply remains steady = price goes up.
  - tonfa 1mo ago
    Also infrastructure costs might be billed differently between industrial vs retail. (And the marginal cost on infrastructure isn't necessarily paid be the people increasing the demand)
  - robotresearcher 1mo ago
    Why should supply stay steady? You want to build an enormous energy sink, you should contribute to increasing the local supply! Putting up everyone’s prices is a hard impact on a community.
    - john_strinlai 1mo ago
      >Why should supply stay steady? i'm not saying it should. but it takes time to bring new power generation online. >You want to build an enormous energy sink, you should contribute to increasing the local supply! agreed
      - robotresearcher 1mo ago
        It does take time to build capacity. But if I build a new office building I’m simply not allowed to open it up and park in the neighborhood driveways today because I have a plan to build a parking structure eventually.
        deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
    - chasd00 1mo ago
      > You want to build an enormous energy sink, you should contribute to increasing the local supply! they want to, hence all the natural gas turbines. However, and this is pretty funny, you don't just order those using doordash or turn up a knob like on AWS. It takes years, if not decades, for those things to get manufactured, delivered, installed, and on line. He who shall not be be named here mentioned in a interview how all these software guys are going to get painful lesson in hardware when they start trying to build behind the meter power generation.
  - benji-york 1mo ago
    In the short term (assuming no point fixes help soften the shock).
- qarl2 1mo ago
  Oregon just passed a law saying data centers will pay more for electricity than normal people, and the math says that everyone's rates will be going down. So, again, I think it depends on whether you live in a red or blue state. https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/04/data-centers-utility-rate-pge/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/04/data-centers-utility-...
  - jayGlow 1mo ago
    that seems odd, do other industries pay a higher rate for electricity or is this specifically targeting data centers?
    - jst1fthsdys 1mo ago
      "HB 3546 creates a new classification for data centers, cryptocurrency and other large industrial energy users using more than 20 megawatts, or 20 million watts of power, to pay for their share of electricity use and costs." https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/oregon-data-centers-cryptocurrency-business-environment-power-electricity/ https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/oregon-data-centers-c...
mediaman 1mo ago
What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! Your electricity price shouldn't go up because of them. So just make a rate card for data centers that ensures the burden doesn't fall on residents. That's what Oregon started doing, and residents' electricity prices actually started falling, because the fixed costs of energy production were being spread across more kilowatt-hours and the data centers weren't getting a special deal. I've also seen counties offer tax incentives. Why? Just have them pay property tax. Then you get nicer schools, more police, better roads. Instead we have these campaigns to stop them, instead of making them a local cash cow. Loudon County gets half of all its revenue from data center property tax. Its residents were already rich, and now their local taxes are artificially low. Who wouldn't want that?
- WarmWash 1mo ago
  They do pay, that's why these towns are doing all these shady things to minimize public input. The problem is that the towns generally want to spend the money on new stuff rather than give the money back in tax cuts.
- epolanski 1mo ago
  > What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! What kind of question is that? Communities that don't want them? You think money can fix and buy everything? Besides, they pay already.
- nancyminusone 1mo ago
  My community tried that. They were coerced into a tax break instead. https://www.wemu.org/wemu-news/2026-07-18/saline-township-reverses-course-gives-full-tax-break-to-oracle-for-data-center https://www.wemu.org/wemu-news/2026-07-18/saline-township-re...
- stryan 1mo ago
  I'm also in favor of making them pay, and in the end I'm expecting/hoping that's what will happen. But either way, when negotiating it's better to start from a harder position (no building) and soften up (limited building, cover the cost of extra electricity) then vice versa. Plus I'm sure some DCs would just pick another spot if forced to compromise; there's always some red county out there willing to do whatever just for a company to build there, that's why a lot of the DCs are being build in LA/AL/MS etc. It might also be more complicated than you might think though due to the complexities of increasing power supply. Power companies also use prices raises to discourage residential use and conserve the existing supply for larger customers. They can't refuse to service residential but they also can't increase supply yet, so they just raise the prices until residential users "choose" to lower their power consumption. My old power company told me it would be a temporary increase until supply was increased, but they said that the last time and it never happened. which, speaking of NOVA, was caused by the Loundon County allowing more data centers to be built. They get the money but since the power grid is regional everyone gets the bill :) .
qarl2 1mo ago
> they generally provide minimal benefits to the local communities Data centers pay Loudoun County, Virginia $26 in taxes for every $1 in services they consume - nearly $1.3 billion, 45% of the county's budget - which is why Loudoun homeowners pay the lowest property tax rate in Northern Virginia. https://www.loudoun.gov/faq.aspx?TID=241 https://www.loudoun.gov/faq.aspx?TID=241
- stryan 1mo ago
  Loudoun County is a very rich part of NOVA and was able to fight for those concessions, as well as being in a very desirable part of the country for those DC's to built in (close to major infrastructure but still undeveloped at the time) so they had a better position to argue from. Plus, as I mentioned in another comment, while Loundoun County gets the tax benefits the whole area is affected by the DC's power consumption due to the regional power grid and shared infrastructure (i.e. the Potomoc) so part of my already high power bills was due to the data centers there and I got minimal benefits.
  - qarl2 1mo ago
    Yes. See my other comment about how Oregon was able to solve the power problem. The residents of Oregon will be paying LOWER prices than before the data centers. The data center problem seems to be merely a government corruption problem. Which is a problem, of course, but not limited to data centers.
    - stryan 1mo ago
      Alas, something like that wouldn't have helped me either as I was on the other side of the river :) . But yeah some sort of regional coordination between local governments or something like that would fix or at least help the problem. Like I said in my original comment, I think really the problem is just the scale of the build out. Before the AI boom DCs were being built slowly enough that it wasn't a problem and/or costs could be amortized over time. But cost sharing agreements and subsidization needs to be done before the DCs are built the they're certainly not going to push for it, so the people need to. Lower state taxes in the future due to DCs subsidizing power is (sincerely) great and all, but it doesn't do shit for the families deciding between food and heating their house in the winter before those benefits kick in.
whimsicalism 1mo ago
> The figures I've been seeing are something like half of all current private construction projects are data center related these days and it's the biggest single sector of construction in terms of money spent. You view this as a measure of data center construction, I view this as a measure of how challenging we've made it to do absolutely anything in the US unless there are massive stacked financial incentives in favor of it.

by stryan 1mo ago

drfloyd51 1mo ago

Wait… large customers move in and your rate goes up? Forget about it. These AI companies could really help themselves by subsidizing local rates. Imagine if a large AI datacenter moved in AND your rate dropped by $70! Everyone would be singing their praises.

john_strinlai 1mo ago
>Wait… large customers move in and your rate goes up? demand goes up + supply remains steady = price goes up.
- tonfa 1mo ago
  Also infrastructure costs might be billed differently between industrial vs retail. (And the marginal cost on infrastructure isn't necessarily paid be the people increasing the demand)
- robotresearcher 1mo ago
  Why should supply stay steady? You want to build an enormous energy sink, you should contribute to increasing the local supply! Putting up everyone’s prices is a hard impact on a community.
  - john_strinlai 1mo ago
    >Why should supply stay steady? i'm not saying it should. but it takes time to bring new power generation online. >You want to build an enormous energy sink, you should contribute to increasing the local supply! agreed
    - robotresearcher 1mo ago
      It does take time to build capacity. But if I build a new office building I’m simply not allowed to open it up and park in the neighborhood driveways today because I have a plan to build a parking structure eventually.
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
  - chasd00 1mo ago
    > You want to build an enormous energy sink, you should contribute to increasing the local supply! they want to, hence all the natural gas turbines. However, and this is pretty funny, you don't just order those using doordash or turn up a knob like on AWS. It takes years, if not decades, for those things to get manufactured, delivered, installed, and on line. He who shall not be be named here mentioned in a interview how all these software guys are going to get painful lesson in hardware when they start trying to build behind the meter power generation.
- benji-york 1mo ago
  In the short term (assuming no point fixes help soften the shock).
qarl2 1mo ago
Oregon just passed a law saying data centers will pay more for electricity than normal people, and the math says that everyone's rates will be going down. So, again, I think it depends on whether you live in a red or blue state. https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/04/data-centers-utility-rate-pge/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/04/data-centers-utility-...
- jayGlow 1mo ago
  that seems odd, do other industries pay a higher rate for electricity or is this specifically targeting data centers?
  - jst1fthsdys 1mo ago
    "HB 3546 creates a new classification for data centers, cryptocurrency and other large industrial energy users using more than 20 megawatts, or 20 million watts of power, to pay for their share of electricity use and costs." https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/oregon-data-centers-cryptocurrency-business-environment-power-electricity/ https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/oregon-data-centers-c...

mediaman 1mo ago

What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! Your electricity price shouldn't go up because of them. So just make a rate card for data centers that ensures the burden doesn't fall on residents. That's what Oregon started doing, and residents' electricity prices actually started falling, because the fixed costs of energy production were being spread across more kilowatt-hours and the data centers weren't getting a special deal. I've also seen counties offer tax incentives. Why? Just have them pay property tax. Then you get nicer schools, more police, better roads. Instead we have these campaigns to stop them, instead of making them a local cash cow. Loudon County gets half of all its revenue from data center property tax. Its residents were already rich, and now their local taxes are artificially low. Who wouldn't want that?

WarmWash 1mo ago
They do pay, that's why these towns are doing all these shady things to minimize public input. The problem is that the towns generally want to spend the money on new stuff rather than give the money back in tax cuts.
epolanski 1mo ago
> What I don't understand is why communities want to block the data centers. Just make them pay! What kind of question is that? Communities that don't want them? You think money can fix and buy everything? Besides, they pay already.
nancyminusone 1mo ago
My community tried that. They were coerced into a tax break instead. https://www.wemu.org/wemu-news/2026-07-18/saline-township-reverses-course-gives-full-tax-break-to-oracle-for-data-center https://www.wemu.org/wemu-news/2026-07-18/saline-township-re...
stryan 1mo ago
I'm also in favor of making them pay, and in the end I'm expecting/hoping that's what will happen. But either way, when negotiating it's better to start from a harder position (no building) and soften up (limited building, cover the cost of extra electricity) then vice versa. Plus I'm sure some DCs would just pick another spot if forced to compromise; there's always some red county out there willing to do whatever just for a company to build there, that's why a lot of the DCs are being build in LA/AL/MS etc. It might also be more complicated than you might think though due to the complexities of increasing power supply. Power companies also use prices raises to discourage residential use and conserve the existing supply for larger customers. They can't refuse to service residential but they also can't increase supply yet, so they just raise the prices until residential users "choose" to lower their power consumption. My old power company told me it would be a temporary increase until supply was increased, but they said that the last time and it never happened. which, speaking of NOVA, was caused by the Loundon County allowing more data centers to be built. They get the money but since the power grid is regional everyone gets the bill :) .

qarl2 1mo ago

> they generally provide minimal benefits to the local communities Data centers pay Loudoun County, Virginia $26 in taxes for every $1 in services they consume - nearly $1.3 billion, 45% of the county's budget - which is why Loudoun homeowners pay the lowest property tax rate in Northern Virginia. https://www.loudoun.gov/faq.aspx?TID=241 https://www.loudoun.gov/faq.aspx?TID=241

stryan 1mo ago
Loudoun County is a very rich part of NOVA and was able to fight for those concessions, as well as being in a very desirable part of the country for those DC's to built in (close to major infrastructure but still undeveloped at the time) so they had a better position to argue from. Plus, as I mentioned in another comment, while Loundoun County gets the tax benefits the whole area is affected by the DC's power consumption due to the regional power grid and shared infrastructure (i.e. the Potomoc) so part of my already high power bills was due to the data centers there and I got minimal benefits.
- qarl2 1mo ago
  Yes. See my other comment about how Oregon was able to solve the power problem. The residents of Oregon will be paying LOWER prices than before the data centers. The data center problem seems to be merely a government corruption problem. Which is a problem, of course, but not limited to data centers.
  - stryan 1mo ago
    Alas, something like that wouldn't have helped me either as I was on the other side of the river :) . But yeah some sort of regional coordination between local governments or something like that would fix or at least help the problem. Like I said in my original comment, I think really the problem is just the scale of the build out. Before the AI boom DCs were being built slowly enough that it wasn't a problem and/or costs could be amortized over time. But cost sharing agreements and subsidization needs to be done before the DCs are built the they're certainly not going to push for it, so the people need to. Lower state taxes in the future due to DCs subsidizing power is (sincerely) great and all, but it doesn't do shit for the families deciding between food and heating their house in the winter before those benefits kick in.

whimsicalism 1mo ago

> The figures I've been seeing are something like half of all current private construction projects are data center related these days and it's the biggest single sector of construction in terms of money spent. You view this as a measure of data center construction, I view this as a measure of how challenging we've made it to do absolutely anything in the US unless there are massive stacked financial incentives in favor of it.