As Electric Bills Rise, Evidence Mounts That U.S. Data Centers Share Blame (apnews.com) 89
"Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech's energy-hungry data centers..." reports the Associated Press.
"Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta." [T]he Data Center Coalition, which represents Big Tech firms and data center developers, has said its members are committed to paying their fair share. But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech as the U.S. competes in a race against China for artificial intelligence superiority. Data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie published a report in recent weeks that suggested 20 proposed or effective specialized rates for data centers in 16 states it studied aren't nearly enough to cover the cost of a new natural gas power plant. In other words, unless utilities negotiate higher specialized rates, other ratepayer classes — residential, commercial and industrial — are likely paying for data center power needs. Meanwhile, Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand.
Last year, five governors led by Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro began pushing back against power prices set by the mid-Atlantic grid operator, PJM Interconnection, after that amount spiked nearly sevenfold. They warned of customers "paying billions more than is necessary." PJM has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a "massive wealth transfer" from average people to tech companies.
At least a dozen states are eyeing ways to make data centers pay higher local transmission costs. In Oregon, a data center hot spot, lawmakers passed legislation in June ordering state utility regulators to develop new — presumably higher — power rates for data centers. The Oregon Citizens' Utility Board [a consumer advocacy group] says there is clear evidence that costs to serve data centers are being spread across all customers — at a time when some electric bills there are up 50% over the past four years and utilities are disconnecting more people than ever.
"Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans," the article points out...
"Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta." [T]he Data Center Coalition, which represents Big Tech firms and data center developers, has said its members are committed to paying their fair share. But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech as the U.S. competes in a race against China for artificial intelligence superiority. Data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie published a report in recent weeks that suggested 20 proposed or effective specialized rates for data centers in 16 states it studied aren't nearly enough to cover the cost of a new natural gas power plant. In other words, unless utilities negotiate higher specialized rates, other ratepayer classes — residential, commercial and industrial — are likely paying for data center power needs. Meanwhile, Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand.
Last year, five governors led by Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro began pushing back against power prices set by the mid-Atlantic grid operator, PJM Interconnection, after that amount spiked nearly sevenfold. They warned of customers "paying billions more than is necessary." PJM has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a "massive wealth transfer" from average people to tech companies.
At least a dozen states are eyeing ways to make data centers pay higher local transmission costs. In Oregon, a data center hot spot, lawmakers passed legislation in June ordering state utility regulators to develop new — presumably higher — power rates for data centers. The Oregon Citizens' Utility Board [a consumer advocacy group] says there is clear evidence that costs to serve data centers are being spread across all customers — at a time when some electric bills there are up 50% over the past four years and utilities are disconnecting more people than ever.
"Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans," the article points out...
Too late for that (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me how much Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerburg are worth again? And what was the subject of that little tax bill the Republicans pushed through Congress recently?
Re:Too late for that [= what?] (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that 93_Escort_Wagon is talking about wealthy corporations using their political clout to externalize their costs and enable more profits
In much the same way that reducing the progressive tax rate on the wealthy puts more money in their pockets (while reducing the Middle class), demanding the communities expand their power generation without considering who the users are, will allow the data center operators to externalize their costs by getting the general public to pay for it. through either public bonds, or increased power rates.
Beyond that, I suspect most AI will be tasked with flattering people into supporting the efforts of the Billionaire Overlords
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You still didn't clarify the "subject" reference, though I think most of your reply was plausible.
So let me try the obvious websearch using his hint... Nope, came up nil from his question and modified versions of his question... Too much stuff there for me to guess at one subject, though one large category was clear tax cuts.
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I missed the joke? Must have to do with the reference of "subject". Care to clarify?
My own reaction is that whether this is bad or good depends on what the data centers are doing. Reminded by the names you mentioned, I'm inclined to the side of "doing bad". So let me try to offer some examples of possible uses of AI:
Good: Time machine for the future. Educate political leaders to do better with accurate descriptions of the consequences of their policies. Surely they will want to have legacies beyond dying with lots of toys?
Bad: GAIvatars used for manipulation, especially manipulation unto death. If someone had a GAIvatar of Epstein six years ago, perhaps it was used to arrange his convenient suicide? (I could go for funny with speculations about promises made and not kept? Or go for serious with a citation of Determined by Robert Sapolosky, arguing against the existence of free will?)
Which idea offended the censor trolls with their bushels of mod points?
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Elon Musk has been using a lot of drugs, so his organs are worth below average.
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Remember, Elon is the only one that runs a solar power company, too.
SolarCity is gone, and has been for nearly 20 years. After the SolarCity assets (and liabilities, such as fires caused by their rooftop solar panels) were acquired by Tesla the solar part of Tesla appears to be a small part of their business, and continually failing to live up to expectations.
Maybe I'm hallucinating but it appears Musk hasn't been talking much about solar power. This seems to be especially true when speaking of Space-X and his efforts to get people to Mars. Musk appears to be on board wi
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I was referring to Tesla Solar.
As was I. Tesla Solar is just SolarCity put under Tesla management.
Before the acquisition SolarCity was struggling. After the acquisition Tesla Solar is still not doing well. Maybe it's not losing money like SolarCity was but its also not exactly producing much of the Tesla income.
How much do people hear of Tesla Solar except for putting canopies over Tesla EV chargers, or in having to deal with fire hazards from the days of SolarCity? With it approaching 20 years since SolarCity has disappeared I'm gue
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Re: Too late for that (Score:2)
The problem with 4th gen nuclear power is that all the projects running so far have at least tripled the estimated cost and the generated power will cost more than the equivalent solar and wind power, even taking into account the required multipliers to create energy security ankh even taking into account that nuclear plants have a longer lifetime - which may not really help them in the long run, because you can upgrade solar and wind 5x faster due to that.
If we get some magical new tech that is much safer
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You are including the constant NIMBY lawsuits against nuclear power into the costs
This is simply enabling the fossil fuel companies to pay 'environmentalists' to lawyer up and shut down competition to fossil fuels that would shut down the industry if nuclear power was not so hampered
The US Congress could create a legal framework to protect nuclear power from such costs, except they are also bought and paid for by fossil fuel interests
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Remind me again how much people are willing to pay for electric cars, getting people and satellites to orbit, products shipped to their door overnight, and... I'm missing something important here... Oh, batteries and solar panels.
While the names listed are of people known for building data centers they do other things. They used money they made in data centers to invest in other industries, including energy production. Musk invested in solar power. Gates invested in nuclear power. I'm not aware of Bezo
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That's because using that money for anything else is socialism!
Funding Medicaid? Socialism!
Universal Health Care? Socialism!
Funding Scientific Research? Socialism!
Climate Change? Socialism!
and on and on and on and on
Eventually you get to the end of the list
Letting Billionaires Accumulate Wealth Faster? SPEND MORE MONEY!
Wi
Re: Too late for that (Score:2)
Socialism is sounding better and better lately.
It has all the good stuff and more sex too.
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Just enact a token tax on AI compute. Make it large enough to easily fund UBI for all the people thrown out of work and enough to subsidize pebble bed reactors at every data center.
The problem is not data centers (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is investor owned utilities
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There are all sorts of cases where we solve problems in the stupidest way imaginable because we can't think about things using a framework that is outside what we were taught during the critical 4 to 14 demographics
Re:The problem is not data centers (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is investor owned utilities
That's a pretty ignorant take.
As someone who has worked around, in, and consulted for the electric industry for decades at this point, I can say with confidence that private versus public utilities really don't have any meaningful difference in outcomes at the meta level. It's been studied pretty extensively, and there are high profile examples of under/over performance under both models as well as conversion between the models. It's such a heavily regulated industry that whether the government controls it directly or not doesn't really matter. In areas where private utilities have really had bad outcomes it was underpinned by poor regulation and lax government oversight. Which is the same reason publicly owned utilities fail, and there's no reason to think the same government that couldn't manage the private electric utility would have done any better running it outright.
People think their bills are set by the utility, but they aren't. They're set by the state. Virtually all costs and incentives are codified for privately owned utilities, and can only change with government approval. Fluctuations in your bill are caused by passthrough costs like fuel and power purchased off the market, which the utility makes $0 on and simply passes on to the consumer. In fact it's very common for a private utility to actually be subsidizing those consumer costs by incurring the full cost up front but passing it on prorated over time for the sake of bill stability. Sometimes the utility even eats a portion of the cost recovery as a loss simply to appease regulators.
The major argument for privately owned utilities that the government regulates is that public utilities have a tendency to become a political football, and that gives incentive to hide poor performance. People don't like to see their bill go up, so there's a natural incentive for politicians to subsidize utility operations out of general tax funds. And because poor performance reflects badly on the government there's also a tendency to not report it. The consumer ends up paying for that regardless, but because those costs get hidden they're hard to address. While some of that exists with private utilities too, because of the adversarial nature of the government relationship it's much harder for private utilities to hide issues. Most states have an office dedicated toward arguing against private utilities on behalf of the ratepayer, in addition to extensive auditing power.
Beyond all of that though, in this specific case with data centers, there's a lot of hot air. Grid operators like PJM in the American North East have been ignoring criticism that they were allowing too much firm capacity to retire for two decades, well before the data center boom. We saw MISO's capacity auction go berserk two years ago in similar fashion, well before these big data center deals were inked. We all know what a shitshow California and Texas have been. These grid operators are actually fortunate they've got the scapegoat of datacenters now, since most industry insiders have anticipated these same issues arising without datacenter loads. Wholesale markets worldwide do not have adequate market constructs to actually ensure grid reliability, and do not have good forward-looking planning or processes for anticipating transmission build. These market construct weaknesses were first seen with large-scale wind and solar deployments, and now datacenters have massively amplified the issues.
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Which is the same reason publicly owned utilities fail, and there's no reason to think the same government that couldn't manage the private electric utility would have done any better running it outright.
There are reasons to think that. Private companies are vulnerable to being taken over by asset strippers, as happened repeatedly in the UK.
Private utilities, even heavily regulated ones, always want to make a profit too. And pay out big C level bonuses. There will always be some extra cost to the consumer to fund that, compared to a government owned non-profit. It can be run like any other business, just put any excess cash back into upgrades or investments, not shareholder pockets.
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The problem is investor owned utilities
You mean like Tesla's virtual power plants?
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No, the problem is, those utilities can buy silence, can buy the obedience of politicians. Politicians should be campaigning against monopolies providing corporate welfare. The abuse of monopoly power to benefit billionaires should be discussed on every Tv. talk-show and radio talk-show.
The willingness of CEOs, reporters and politicians to do nothing, is terrifying. This is a text-book example of fascism. As long as politicians can be bought, the press can be bought, robbery of the working-class (and
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Socialized utilities is the only way forward.
Are you serious?
Any profits can offset taxpayers tax burden instead of lining the pockets of the olygarchs.
I might be able to take you seriously if you knew how to spell. Now I'll see if I can spell "oligarch" correctly or make a fool of myself. I'm getting the impression that this word is getting the most use by people that don't know what it means. I don't know why I should expect the government to spend money any more wisely than a profit seeking "oligarch" as there's a history of politicians repeatedly spending money poorly and keeping their jobs, while a profit seeking private company wil
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Socialized utilities is the only way forward.
Are you serious?
Let's enter the wayback machine, and transport ourselves to NSW, Australia, circa 1988. Back then, power generation was a state government responsibility. Electricity generation costs grew, of course, over time, but it was reasonable.
Then, in the late 1980's, the NSW state government had this bright idea: sell off electricity generation to private industry, who would compete (ha!) amongst each other and deliver lower electricity costs as a result of this competition to consumers. They would also benefit fro
Re: The problem is not data centers (Score:2)
In communist Europe, the part where I live uses a heavily regulated private market after the local governments sold off their shares. It has had some benefits (actual choice) and some issues, as the Dutch govt still had to make sure the cables are there - infrastructure is something you really don't want to privatise as it is an effective monopoly.
So far so good.
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the U.S. competes in a race against China for artificial intelligence superiority.
What race? And how will the US know when it's won? Will a referee step out, blow the whistle, and announce "The US generated 37 microAltmans of hype while China only managed 13 microAltmans, I declare the US the winner"?
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Time to alter pricing structures. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of charging less for buys who purchase a LOT of power, it would be logical to alter the pricing structure so that they have to pay more. This is scheme would be a logical way to encourage businesses to be more power efficient.
Before someone goes off saying it would blow up the economy, I would point out that this shouldn't be an overnight change but a gradual one in order to let businesses adjust.
Re:Time to alter pricing structures. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much this. If your biggest customers aren't also your most profitable, you're doing capitalism wrong.
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Sometimes there are economies of scale to be had. Per unit cost is lower at Costco, which is why I shop there a lot, in bulk.
In this case, it is more about the political clout of data center customers, and their lobbying budgets.
Which is very much a capitalistic thing, too.
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Pretty much this. If your biggest customers aren't also your most profitable, you're doing capitalism wrong.
How adorable. You think Capitalism is still a thing.
Every brand that you can think of is owned by one or two corporations. There is very little competition anymore. If competition arises, it gets bought out. There are very few things that you can buy any more that are actually quality. Almost every single item being sold can barely be called a representative of that particular item. Buy a toaster. Will it even toast once? Will it get to 100 uses? Unlikely. But if it does, hey great, it actually is a toaster
New House Rule: AI can only use renewable power (Score:3)
Now THAT's an externality.
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Re: New House Rule: AI can only use renewable powe (Score:2)
It occurs to me that is exactly what a fledgling Skynet would want us to do...
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I don't even think they have to be charged higher rates; it should be enough to simply charge everyone the same rate.
Re:Time to alter pricing structures. (Score:5, Interesting)
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In the UK commercial operators have things like time-of-use pricing and power factor pricing. They are strongly motivated to time shift, to improve the power factor (a major cost for energy suppliers) of their operation, and to reduce consumption. The bigger ones even get into buying their own power.
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That's an interesting point. The fairest way to do it would be to charge based on the cost of supply at the time of use. Residential customers usually prefer a fixed rate so that they have certainty, but it would really help get prices down for everyone if people were willing to be just a tiny bit flexible.
In the UK you can actually get paid to use more electricity, if you have the right equipment. Prices are published 48 hours in advance. On some tariffs they can go negative, i.e. you get paid to consume.
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I don't think people realize that our ruling class has had enough of us peasants having civilization.
People don't seem to realize that the average Joe has really only enjoyed civilization for about a hundred years or so depending on the country you live in.
There is absolutely no reason that can't just all be taken away from you so that we can go back to having kings and queens and emperors
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It's not electricity, it's a home. If you are homeless, you aren't worried about electrical service. Billionaires are buying up housing...very intentionally.
Once you have no say in your own living arrangements, billionaires can choose whether you get electricity or not.
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Some people live in their vehicle, which might still need plugging in.
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Instead of charging less for buys who purchase a LOT of power, it would be logical to alter the pricing structure so that they have to pay more. This is scheme would be a logical way to encourage businesses to be more power efficient.
No, that doesn't follow.
Like anything else electricity is cheaper when bought in bulk. When there's higher prices on anything for large purchases then we see big companies restructure into a bunch of small companies so on paper it looks like small purchases. This means we artificially created more overhead and gained nothing for the effort.
A parallel may be found in how tariffs were not charged for imports on small shipments. This created a loophole Chinese companies exploited to lower shipping costs.
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No, that doesn't follow.
When there's higher prices on anything for large purchases then we see big companies restructure into a bunch of small companies so on paper it looks like small purchases.
Simply make the high cost tier the level that data centers consume. You can't subdivide a data center.
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The Chinese government just announced that its industry will be obliged to buy renewable energy. It's already the cheapest, but now there is an obligation to adapt to variable availability and storage too. They clearly don't think that it's going to tank their economy - quite the opposite, in fact.
It's being touted as a boost to industry. A reason to build and buy more.
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Instead of charging less for buys who purchase a LOT of power, it would be logical to alter the pricing structure so that they have to pay more. This is scheme would be a logical way to encourage businesses to be more power efficient.
You could do that. If I remember my Econ 101, the marginal cost to produce sometimes goes up as scale goes up. In that case, you've got a reasonable case that the first person in should get a low price, last in has to pay the higher cost to produce. Or your could give discounts for people who buy in bulk, which is how most markets seem to work.
But really, it's not a surprise: higher demand leads to higher prices, all else being held equal. The answer is to build a lot more generation capacity. It's kind of
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The middle class will pay for that too.
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Build them next to poor communities, that way you don't have to worry about safety systems.
Sure. But... (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear power plants cost billions to build and billions more to run and decommission.
The problem, as the article explained, is that the rates that the data centers pay will not cover the costs of the generation and transmission facilities that the data centers will require to be built. The cost of the generation and transmission will be partially paid by consumers(residential).
This has sort of been the case with commercial vs. residential rates for a long time. But now, the data centers are using dramatically more power than even most commercial users and it's being subsidized by everyone else. The data centers are getting the power far too cheaply.
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I see data centers going up that are going to bring 50 to 70 jobs and that's what the company is claiming with their inflated numbers. And they're not pointing out how they're going to bring in at least half the staff from offshore because they want employees to do 996 (6 days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. if you don't know what that is) and American data center workers won't do that. At least not yet
You don't even get the construction jobs because mod
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You also get basically fuck all jobs from it.
I'm amazed at how people believe higher labor costs for energy production is some kind of benefit.
We want to minimize labor costs for energy, if the opposite were true then this could be easily extrapolated to the absurd with paying people to pedal on stationary bikes for energy. Is that how we get affordable and reliable energy? Of course not. We want big centralized power plants so we can keep overhead like maintenance, administration, and security to a minimum.
I'm reminded of a story on how in the day
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Indeed, very cheap. The Brits are planning to dismantle Sellafield for only £243 billion and will need 100 years for it.
A Wind-Generator is somewhat cheaper to dismantle.
And you don't have to guard the parts from terrorists form184,000 years.
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Because your power bills aren't high enough you want more of the most expensive form of energy generation in the mix?
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Build it (Score:3)
In large measure I am just saying this is how it will play out, rather than advocating for something, but we (citizens of the democracy) need to ensure the investments are sound long-term, not just financially but environmentally.
It's a big opportunity.
Wrong target to grow a spine against (Score:2)
It doesn't take spine to yell at corporations, it's easy to get elected yelling at corporations. What does take spine is:
1. building nuclear plants to make energy cheaper for all, and telling the locals and faux environmentalists to go f themselves when they try to stop it with timewaster court cases
2. building solar and wind against current Federal hamstringing
3. keeping natural gas around as a heat source despite hairbrained ideas of moving all cooking and heating to the grid
Correction (Score:2)
Should read "harebrained" instead of "hairbrained". Hares are probably more intelligent than hairs, but what do I know, I'm just chimp++.
Re:Wrong target to grow a spine against (Score:4, Insightful)
So... it takes a spine to throw even more of ratepayer's money at the problem that these data centers are causing?
The whole argument is that these large consumers are being indirectly subsidized by households. Everything you have suggested will just make that worse.
Charge these places out the ass for all the power they're sucking up. They got the money to pay it, or they can build their own power infrastructure.
=Smidge=
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Charge these places out the ass for all the power they're sucking up. They got the money to pay it, or they can build their own power infrastructure.
Absolutely not. You will pay for it as you are expendable. The AI company or Facebook or whatever is NOT expendable.
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Going up... (Score:2)
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This is what government can do to help Big Tech and reduce energy usage of population:
1. Expel immigrants - removing 10-15 million people will decrease energy usage and allow for more energy for AI
2. Increase mortality: a) remove public health insurance b) ban vaccines c) remove pollution norms
So, elect Donald Trump as president again?
So... Lemme get this straight: (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Don't pay for copyrighted material
2. Don't pay to build out the power infrastructure you require
3. Pay less than consumers for commodity power
4. Profit!
I think "eat the rich" ought to come back in fashion.
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I think "eat the rich" ought to come back in fashion.
You can't. You do not know exactly who they are or where they are. They are eating you though.
Need rolling blackouts of data centers (Score:2)
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You mean, like this?
https://www.reuters.com/sustai... [reuters.com]
"Google has signed agreements with two U.S. electric utilities to reduce its AI data center power consumption during times of surging demand on the grid, the company said on Monday, as energy-intensive AI use outpaces power supplies."
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A curtailing agreement isn't the same as a blackout.
This can't be solved on the state leve (Score:2)
It's easy for a hard line stance to be taken by one person. It's more difficult for it to be taken by 50 people. Do you think you have 50 sane governors in America all aligned on the interests of the consumer? If you don't (which you don't) then these data centres will be built regardless. Now power is no longer a question and the all consideration devolves down to where you want the joooooobs.
It's the principle of tragedy of commons played down on a jobs / power resource basis. It makes absolute sense for
PJM is an outlier (Score:3)
PJM's administration was broken, preventing new generation from coming online purely due to red tape.
I beg to differ (Score:2)
It's the laundry list of regulatory fees that make up much of one's electric bill.
Thank you USA (Score:2)
For my free chat GPT in Oz subsidised by the American working poor!
Someone wanted to bring manufacturing back to US? (Score:2)
Industry consumes electricity, lots of it. Datacenters is just one example.
Aluminum plants consumes gobs of electricity, profitable plants usually locate next to power plants with lots of stable and cheap power, like geothermal or hydro.
I heard someone wanted to bring manufacturing back to the US, are there power plants being built to support the factories? Where are the new dams being built to give hydro power and also serve as a giant battery?
Some factories also consumes lots of fresh water, especially
duh (Score:2)
duh?
Local communities are saying NO ! (Score:2)
but why do you all hate (Score:2)
No fucking shit (Score:2)
Interesting Wyoming tariffs (Score:3)
The same arrangement probably can't be used in places where an ISO operates the grid through a pure market system.