There was an article I read a while ago that kind of explained it. Basically, the increased datacenter demand forces the grid operator to build more capacity, which requires money. I think there are meetings where they decide how it is distributed across all their corporate and resident ratepayers. Basically the lobbyists argue that the since this new capacity technically benefits rate payers in the form of more capacity, they should take a share of it. Even though none of us are actually going to be using that capacity…
And it doesn’t help at all that the grid companies are monopolies
Unpopular opinion, but when competing for a scarce resource, everyone pays more because it is more scarce. Then more gets created (at least in the case of power) and the system equalizes.
It would be better if there was a provision to cover the spike for ratepayers for some number of years.
Large data centers often pay less than home users (due to economies to scale)
You’re paying thrice:
1: With your spare time in which you give advice on forums and maintain Wikipedia pages. This information is getting slurped up by AI crawlers.
2: Implicitly with your money, to get some new AI doodad on your laptop or your phone, trained on 1.
3: See meme.And that’s why billionaires exists.
Hell with billionaires and tax cuts to increase something the average person won’t enjoy, I bet it’s even more than thrice.
Property tax increase cause property is used but not taxed due to being a ‘big project’, if another company built there (besides say wal mart it’d be taxed)
Power bill increase, which we see happens to OPs post.
Using land that could benefit the area, it’s probably a large complex that could help the locals and not make their power bill larger.
Having a complex that heats up local area for things not beneficial to locals. Global warming but thankfully some ai model will grow?
Using water that makes drinking water worse for locals. Read stories of people near data centers, losing all water pressure so the data center can have water. Cause that’s more important than people.
Only helping the person who built it vs the locals. I really have no idea who data centers help. I assume some are for the crappy bit we see when we Google but so many must be private. Also who hasn’t learned to go through search results? Seriously that’s a skill needed, if you don’t have it you need to learn. I may have accepted the new paradigm but I would prefer a bit of work going back to searching.
There no good reason for this crap. They get built but don’t benefit anyone but the rich. They just want serfs anyways, is that the real future?
FWIW,
wp:Opposition to AI data centers,
wp:Military applications of artificial intelligence,
wp:Category:Artificial intelligence,
36 subcats and 247 articles,
wp:Discrimination against robots,
wp:Category:Artificial intelligence controversies,
3 subcats and 27 articles
wp:Category:Existential risk from artificial intelligence,
64 articles
wp:How to Survive a Robot Uprising,
How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion is a semi-satirical book by Daniel Wilson published in November 2005.
Critics believe that the data center has the capability to process “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all types of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter’.”[6] In response to claims that the data center would be used to illegally monitor email of U.S. citizens, in April 2013 an NSA spokesperson said, “Many unfounded allegations have been made about the planned activities of the Utah Data Center, … one of the biggest misconceptions about NSA is that we are unlawfully listening in on, or reading emails of, U.S. citizens. This is simply not the case.”[4]
wp:Ethics of artificial intelligence,
Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence is a book on artificial intelligence (AI) by Dan McQuillan, published in 2022 by Bristol University Press.
wp:Category:Criticism of artificial intelligence
1 subcat with 32 articles, and 12 articles
wp:Democratic backsliding in the United States,
wp:Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models,
Search Google: How to destroy a data center
including:
Datacenter Violence
https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/comments/1pm2h7w/datacenter_violence/
What would be the easiest way to stop data from flowing out of a data center? I’m writing a novel where a terrorist needs to successfully halt all data flowing from a large data center. Would it be best to destroy fiber cables? A Virus?
What is the point of this collection of links? What are you trying to communicate with this comment?
Spam account? seems like ai slop
Check my profile, and you’ll see how spammy it is.
They might serve more than AI crawlers.
Isn’t sharing the bill while a small group profits exactly how capitalism works?
They’re putting data centers in near me (they have been heavily protested, but of course that doesn’t do shit, the local government holds lots of meetings that are crowded with people saying they don’t want them, and then they shrug and approve them anyway. The last meeting I heard about they just flat out cancelled because too many people were planning on coming and speaking against it). I got a letter from my power company that they’re raising electric rates, and would I like to contribute to a fund to help pay other people’s bill?
Replace them. Either recruit a candidate or run yourself. Ignoring your voters should have consequences.
Oh I know exactly how I’m voting next election, but the problem is that I live in a conservative area and these dumb fuckers wouldn’t vote for their own self interest if you held a gun to their heads, because if they vote for things that benefit them then a brown person or someone on disability might also benefit.
This conundrum is why America has been continuously turning into a shit hole for the lower classes. It goes all the way back to right after the civil rights movement. By the early 70s, most public pools were filled with concrete (supplemented via private country club pools of course) and white private schools were opened up all over the South to exclude blacks. These examples are just a small part of what has been going on over the last 50+ years.
MAGAts want all to suffer, including themselves, if it also means that POCs, women, LGBTQ+, foreigners, leftists, liberals, and other never-Trumpers suffer.
Not to sidestep it, but at what point is doing personal solar a better deal, if you own that is
Unfortunately I rent an apartment. I’d love to do a solar array on my balcony, but it’s small and faces north so I don’t think it would be cost effective.
Is electricity where you are much cheaper at night?
It’s the same rate regardless of the time of day.
sad to read that.
Here in Ontario, the rates are lower at night and during the weekends (a little less than half).
https://www.hydroone.com/rates-and-billing/rates-and-charges/electricity-pricing-and-costs
Time to molatov cocktail the AI daracenter. A sudden unexpected fire happened. Dunno how 🤷♀️
Guess they can just get AI to figure out whodunnit
Egg the diesel, sugar the concrete.
Data centers have lobbying force the citizens lack, they can negotiate for better prices.
Data centers also force power grid upgrades, the cost of which gets unfairly distributed to consumers.
And, data centers have the technology to take advantage of peak pricing, running on low power when electricity costs more and amping up when the price is more favorable.
People need to fight back in force, write their representatives, their energy companies, show up to town halls and increase public pressure to make sure data centers are paying their fair share.
I emailed the department of energy asking it why the cost of the data centers energy is being pushed onto the people and I also mentioned how it seems like a direct conflict of interest.
You think those clowns care about your email?? Probably got put in the trash as soon as it arrived.
Still worth a try asking, right?
Debt trickles down, money trickles up
See? Trickle down economics does work! With debt.
Don’t you have something like an energy board to protect your citizens against price hikes by power companies.
If we did, it would be populated by MAGAs who would take bribes to let the power company put ALL the costs on the residential consumers. Except for the wealthy neighborhood. They deserve a break, because they’re better.
Sounds like getting politically involved is a MAGA-exclusive thing in your country.
People with wealth have more time on their hands and are also more likely to have a mentality that they deserve what they have more than others. Many of them are obsessed with hierarchy whether they realize it or not, allowing them to dismiss the troubles of the commoners with talk of personal responsibility.
You don’t need wealth, just using your spare time getting involved is enough to boost the ranks.
And you feel like lacking personal responsibility is gonna change your life?
But there is a personal responsibility to check the job market, get your credit up to a good standing, make sure you read your loan agreement terms, make sure youre not gonna get done learning and go into a saturated field that will no longer exist in 4 to 8 years.
When it comes to investing in yourself: People have to stop investing in bullshit and start investing in practicality.
Why do you think so many people turn to medical professions, hard labor jobs or STEM. They’re the only ones left that you can afford and it’ll make you a decent ROI where you’re not going to be trapped for 50 years in a loan.
I don’t really get how the fig leaf of “due to data-centers” is even supposed to work.
They get more demand, so more revenue. Then the fixed costs of the business are spread over more revenue, which is supposed to make the prices better not worse.
I know the profit motive is just extracting whatever the market will bear, but could anyone still explain the reasoning they are trying to make customers believe?
but could anyone still explain the reasoning they are trying to make customers believe?
That’s the neat part, they don’t have to bother with that!
I don’t really get how the fig leaf of “due to data-centers” is even supposed to work.
It let’s them increase their extortionary price hike by more, and blame it on a different extortionist.
probably need to build new power plants while the existing ones are in overdrive
they could handle that diffeently, bug fleecing regular joe is more fun
Somewhere at the energy company is a person or small team responsible for that message. And those are regular people who also are getting fucked in the ass. Carefully crafted to keep their job (shifting the blame away from the utility slightly), while also letting everyone know who’s dick it is in their bumbum
It can depend, also this little snippet doesn’t say if it’s energy or delivery. Some utilities really like expanding delivery because the projects are revenue, and they don’t make much, if any, on the delivery. But in some cases those delivery expansion projects have a long payback time, so they avoid them until they’re critical, and also lose if after building the demand they were serving goes down.
It also varies a ton by state (Texas being the most extreme example). As well as, someone noted below, how the energy purchase goes. In my state there’s an independent not for profit that is not the utility, and not the energy producer, that just coordinates purchase of power from the broader region (across multiple states). They’ll mix whats coming into the grid in the state going “call Ohio and buy XXYY megawatts for ZZ hrs from that coal fire joint”. The control room is cool as hell. They seem pretty ethically clean, but purchasing that power is a bidding process (like, real time), and your bid has to be competitive.
How the fuck should a loan program help paying for monthly recurring costs?!
Have you heard of the concept of company towns?
“Capitalism breeds innovation”
Meanwhile we have monthly installments for monthly installments.
Well, in the past (and the present in many places) perpetual unrepayable debts were used as a way to implement slavery without calling it slavery. They call it debt peonage. You know, food for thought.
the more I’m debt you get the more you owe them,
Short term it pads the companies books a bit more by adding an asset on top of the revenue. Medium term it’s a perpetual impairment generator. The executives are just planning to cash out before the inevitable happens.
It helps people who can still pay on average but have an unexpected cost which, due to higher bills, now pushes them into the red.
I guess they cover you for a while until you figure it out. It’s better than nothing ig.
It’s really not. What it does is trap these people in endless debt. Now we don’t know any details about these loans, but there’s no way in hell the customers aren’t going to be paying fees and interest. A loan of $40 will be a loan of $100 the next month and so on. This is a way to make extra off of the people who have nothing.
In the corporate world, if you are taking on debt to fund operations, that’s an indicator that your business is circling the drain. The same applies to personal finance.
I absolutely cannot figure this out. Isn’t a kwh the same price for everyone? Why would a data center pay less? (I’m not asking anyone to justify the poor decisions of energy companies)
Isn’t a kwh the same price for everyone?
Not sure why you’d assume this
People tend to like to imagine the world is fair and just.
Same as with RAM prices. There is a limited supply and the datacenters are hogging it, possibly willing to pay extra because the entire bubble depends on MORE MORE MORE, or willing to bulk purchase the entire contingent in advance.
Now if you are a power supplier you find yourself in the comfortable position of being financially courted by the datacenter corps, and you have a captured audience of consumers who rely on you supplying them, who you can now justifiably bleed out, and if they cant pay you just sell it to the datacenter after all.
That is actually very sick behavior.
Capitalism is essentially based on the concept that everyone doing whatever they believe is in their best interest will magically balance itself out and achieve the most-efficient outcome, instead of the most self-serving and greedy criminals and psychopaths colluding to exploit and deceive the masses, accrue the lions share, and enslave everyone else.
It’s basically a religiously-dogmatic mental illness that has no place beyond the 19th Century, but the criminals and psychopaths used their wealth to exploit and deceive the masses… so here we are. May the greediest psychopath win!
One might not have to buy (i.e. pay), or buy as much, if one has solar or even just a stack of batteries to get electricity during the off periods.
To you or I, surely, but to an MBA it’s just business as usual.
This is America.
Isn’t a kwh the same price for everyone?
Perversely, no. Large industrial users often get a bulk rate that’s cheaper than the household rate.
Happy cake day, BTW.
Clout. Aura. Bargaining force. Call it whatever you want, really. Corporations are big, they have capital, capital is power. They can hire people to influence politics, pushing for people who are on their side to get elected by funding campaigns, and naturally bribe people on the down low.
Stick, along with the other people served by their provider, most likely don’t have the ability to pay people to lobby for them full time. Most people barely have the money to keep their personal economy going, and spend a significant portion of their time just making that happen. As a result, the corporations who are benefiting from this sit on all the power, because they can influence public opinion as well, painting their politics as beneficial to private individuals, even if that’s a complete lie.
That is why democracy and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. Workers could band together and claim power, but they’re kept in situations where doing that just isn’t feasible.
Things won’t get better without some kind of revolution. The balance of power is tipped so far in favour of the corporations that no matter how much time or money workers spend (neither of which we have) trying to better things, they’ll never get even close to what the corpos can swing with.
If it’s anything like it is here in Victoria (Australia); the price per MWh is recalculated based on supply/demand on a 5 minute basis:
https://www.aemo.com.au/aemo/data/nem/priceanddemand/PRICE_AND_DEMAND_202607_VIC1.csv
That’s because when supply outruns demand, surplus electricity is basically worthless and wholesalers need to pay someone to take it - we have long stretches of time, even during winter, where our domestic solar production saturates the demand, resulting in our Feed-in tariffs (what homes get paid for surplus production) has dropped to 1c/kWh, except for certain edge cases).
The bulk of the cost incurred is due to peak-energy generation (gas turbine, I believe?) ramping up to cover peak evening times.
These costs are aggregated and amortised over total demand, to balance out people’s energy bills.
This has been a bit of a tangent, but I found this interesting when I first learned it, and just wanted to share!
Definitely a smart move letting those power utilities be privatised, even a regulation forcing cost price power for residents would have been better than full privatisation. I’m so glad my state never got sucked into letting that happen here.
Fortunately, Oregon seems to have figured out how to handle this. This was in my feed, literally right under this post.
but reducing customers rate by 1.3% isnt that much, it should be 30%
Our rates haven’t gone up by much lately. The rates have kept more in line with the stupid inflation.
As the other commenter said, they have a limited supply and are expecting us plebeians to be priced out and go without. It’s already happening: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/virginia-county-tells-workers-switch-002400860.html
Everyone on the power exchange. Consumers don’t pay the exchange price. They pay a premium to the company that transforms exchange power to household power on a virtual sheet of paper.
they get a wholesale/bulk rate which is far cheaper than residential, we atually pay for any datacenter, business in the end.
Folks who are saying the price is going up because of demand are technically right but it’s kinda misleading. People get mad when they don’t understand their bills so I wanna add to that:
With more demand in the system, more distribution equipment is used and will need more maintenance. Your electric bill has fixed fees and usage fees. The fixed fees include the cost of capital upgrades, which cover these costs. It’s not a direct 1:1 cost for each connection, as the upstream feed capacity needs to increase too.
Cost per KW may go up too, it depends on the way your utility is set up. Time of day pricing is meant to encourage offsetting costs and sometimes large customers pay proportional to the contribution to peak demand.
It doesn’t help that this increase in demand comes when so much of the grid is old as fuck in north america. But we live in interesting times.
Data centers forcing grid upgrades is all the more reason their rates should be higher. They should be paying 100% of those capital upgrade costs, too!
Okay these are literally things that you can vote for you need to find out who regulates energy rates and get on their ass
It may well be the same price for the data center too, but now that there’s significantly more load on the network and there’ve been no changes to network capacity the price is being adjusted to reconcile the new demand with existing supply.
Privatized profits, socialized cost. That’s the “free market”.
