9 ms·

Supply and demand. The Hyperion Datacenter alone is estimated to eat 5GW of power from the grid. In contrast, all of Texas just reached a peak of 91GW a few w

Supply and demand. The Hyperion Datacenter alone is estimated to eat 5GW of power from the grid. In contrast, all of Texas just reached a peak of 91GW a few weeks ago. A singular datacenter uses electricity that's comparable to small states, and is a non-negligable portion of electricity usage of larger states like Texas. -------- What do you think happens when a rich datacenter comes in bidding whatever price for electricity? Spoiler alert, we live in a free market. The price auctions of electricity skyrockets, just like what's going on in the PJM interconnect.

newsomix9xl 1mo ago
I have seen a local utility promote a program to use electricity at off peak hours. Why? So they didn't have to create more capacity: they could keep using their old generators which were profitable; adding more capacity cut into their profit margin. They are deliberately reducing supply to keep themselves at maximum profitability. But hey - someone invents popular electric cars, and everyone wants to use AI for their homework. These things need electrical capacity. A lot more. As I've said elsewhere: data centers don't set electrical prices (utilities do, sometimes under regulators); data centers don't determine capacity - utilities do. Data Centers want cheap electricity and abundant capacity like we all do. Maybe more so. If a local restaurant makes hamburgers, and decides to restrict the number of hamburgers they can make to keep profit margins up, and then someone comes into town with a circus that wants to eat and the restaurant decides to triple their prices to gouge the circus and sells all the hamburgers to them, is that the fault of the circus? The circus didn't want to restrict the restaurant capacity, nor did they set the price of the burger. They want many and cheap burgers like everyone else - they're a customer just like us. This is clearly an institutional problem: greedy inefficient utilities, and let's call them "oddly cooperative" political players (I'm not gonna say corrupt without any evidence, but whose interests are they serving?).

newsomix9xl 1mo ago

I have seen a local utility promote a program to use electricity at off peak hours. Why? So they didn't have to create more capacity: they could keep using their old generators which were profitable; adding more capacity cut into their profit margin. They are deliberately reducing supply to keep themselves at maximum profitability. But hey - someone invents popular electric cars, and everyone wants to use AI for their homework. These things need electrical capacity. A lot more. As I've said elsewhere: data centers don't set electrical prices (utilities do, sometimes under regulators); data centers don't determine capacity - utilities do. Data Centers want cheap electricity and abundant capacity like we all do. Maybe more so. If a local restaurant makes hamburgers, and decides to restrict the number of hamburgers they can make to keep profit margins up, and then someone comes into town with a circus that wants to eat and the restaurant decides to triple their prices to gouge the circus and sells all the hamburgers to them, is that the fault of the circus? The circus didn't want to restrict the restaurant capacity, nor did they set the price of the burger. They want many and cheap burgers like everyone else - they're a customer just like us. This is clearly an institutional problem: greedy inefficient utilities, and let's call them "oddly cooperative" political players (I'm not gonna say corrupt without any evidence, but whose interests are they serving?).