[HN Gopher] Data centers contribute to high prices as energy bil...
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       Data centers contribute to high prices as energy bills electrify
       local politics
        
       Author : moose_man
       Score  : 81 points
       Date   : 2025-11-01 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
        
       | l1n wrote:
       | hm, I think this contradicts the results from
       | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061902...
        
         | cpitman wrote:
         | Yeah, I was thinking of the same study. Looking at just the
         | conversation on HN, lots of people are installing solar. Solar
         | reduces the amount of energy used by that customer, but does
         | not lower the cost of infrastructure to distribute power to
         | that customer at all. And the cost of electricity is dominated
         | by distribution and transmission, not generation. With an
         | increased share of costs going to overhead infrastructure, the
         | cost per watt goes up. Higher consumption increases the share
         | of costs due to generation, and cost per watt goes down.
         | 
         | "Contrary to these concerns, our analysis finds that state-
         | level load growth in recent years (through 2024) has tended to
         | reduce average retail electricity prices. Fig. 5 depicts this
         | relationship for 2019-2024: states with the highest load growth
         | experienced reductions in real prices, whereas states with
         | contracting loads generally saw prices rise."
        
           | thechao wrote:
           | Which is why cheap batteries will be the camel that broke the
           | straw's back. It's really hard to find numbers, but I like
           | 20-30$/kwh by 2030. At those prices I can get a 4 day backup
           | for an oversized (50kw) solar panel install for my house for
           | 20k$. Why even hook up to the grid, at all?
        
             | mhb wrote:
             | > Why even hook up to the grid, at all?
             | 
             | Day 5?
        
             | Ericson2314 wrote:
             | Hook up to the grid for arbitrage, and make some more
             | money.
        
       | chrisBob wrote:
       | My solar install is scheduled for December. Even if it ends up
       | missing the cutoff for a tax break I still think it's the right
       | thing to do. The combination of investing in green energy and
       | locking in my effective electric rate is the smart move right
       | now.
       | 
       | ... and I heard on Friday that OpenAI is planning a data center
       | 15 miles south of me. That can only make things worse.
        
         | nonethewiser wrote:
         | Whats the time to make your money back with and without the tax
         | break?
        
           | dmoy wrote:
           | I think GP's point isn't necessary "with vs without tax
           | break", it's "with vs without giant future increase in
           | electricity price"
        
           | SteveGerencser wrote:
           | We cancelled our install after TN removed the state level
           | breaks. It pushed the payback out past the expected lifespan
           | of the panels (25 years). I would have been fine with a 10
           | year payback, but 25+ was just not worth doing.
        
             | TuringNYC wrote:
             | >> I would have been fine with a 10 year payback, but 25+
             | was just not worth doing.
             | 
             | We are struggling with this also -- with or without an
             | incentive. The payback period is long. Makes sense if you
             | think forward rates will be super-high. But people are
             | quite aggressive with their forward rate estimates, _yet
             | super-liberal with the lifespan estimates_.
             | 
             | I've dealt with enough appliance breakdowns to know all the
             | tricks companies pull
             | 
             | - You have a 25 year warranty, but only on parts. The labor
             | ends up costing more than an entire new system.
             | 
             | - You have a 25 year warranty, but only on labor. The parts
             | ends up costing more than an entire new system, possibly
             | because the parts are no longer made. Labor warranty is now
             | useless and you need to buy a new system all over.
             | 
             | - You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but the
             | company declares bankruptcy and you have no warranty any
             | longer.
             | 
             | - You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but the
             | company got acquired and the acquiring company "cant find
             | your warranty details in their system". Regulators are
             | powerless to actually help despite months of letters.
             | 
             | - You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but a
             | tree/hail falls on the house and they declare it out of
             | bounds of warranty. You go through your home insurance, but
             | they only cover current value, not replacement value. You
             | buy a whole new system, only partially covered and start
             | all over again.
             | 
             | - You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but
             | manufacturer blames the malfunction on improper
             | installation, but the installation company is long-
             | gone/retired/non-responsive/bankrupt. Possibly the Accord
             | insurance form is fake also (how many people actually
             | verify the insurance Accord is real?)
             | 
             | Been there, done that, on all the above. Eventually, your
             | only religion is deferred maintenance because you know you
             | get ripped off royally no matter what you do. We havent yet
             | heard horror stories because these systems are new, but
             | you'll hear all the above as time goes on, and people
             | realize the actual life of their systems are far shorter
             | than their payback periods.
        
               | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
               | Most good solar panels have a 12-15 year warranty on the
               | panel, and a 25-30 year warranty on performance.
               | 
               | But this is a warranty, and you have many panels. If
               | they're all going to fail, they will fail sooner. If one
               | fails or breaks eventually, even if it's not under
               | warranty, replacing the panel is dirt cheap. Of course
               | you need to replace it with an identical panel, so it
               | makes more sense to buy extra panels and just assume some
               | will die. But even if you paid for a replacement, that's
               | already just $100-$200, and it'll probably be cheaper in
               | the future.
               | 
               | So the warranty isn't really that important long-term.
               | They're more important for the short term, and a Tier 1
               | solar provider's so reliable that you don't really need
               | it anyway.
        
               | trollbridge wrote:
               | The cost to replace a panel is not "dirt cheap" and
               | requires significant skill.
               | 
               | I could say that "rebuilding a car engine is dirt cheap"
               | assuming I can do it myself.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | Yeah I just have absolutely zero interest in owning,
               | being responsible for, and avoiding scammers in my own
               | electrical power generation, with some vague hope of
               | breaking even decades later. I'll gladly pay a utility
               | for reliable power, regardless of wind and cloud
               | conditions, where they are responsible for all the
               | infrastructure upstream of my meter.
        
               | trollbridge wrote:
               | Right. I do a lot of self sufficient things (including
               | some of my own power generation) but I lack the desire to
               | become my own power utility end to end. It's already
               | frustrating enough since I provide water and sewage to
               | multiple households and electrical connection to the
               | utility with solar and generator backup.
        
             | malshe wrote:
             | Is this because of the labor costs in the US? In other
             | countries the payback period is much shorter. Someone I
             | know in Brazil told me it is 3-5 years for them.
             | 
             | On a related note, I asked my AC guy if he knows any
             | trustworthy solar installers. He told me that only crooks
             | are in that business :)
        
               | sethhochberg wrote:
               | In the US, there's often a large labor/materials upcharge
               | on anything that can be branded as "green" - you see a
               | lot of the same thing with higher end heat pump systems
               | and such, too. Efficiency is (for whatever reasons)
               | frequently sold as a luxury product feature in our market
               | and the installers take advantage.
        
               | mhb wrote:
               | Or other countries could be paying more for electricity?
        
           | edm0nd wrote:
           | you'll basically never make it back iirc
           | 
           | by the time you may even get close to paying it off, its time
           | for a new one.
           | 
           | really only worth if you just want to have solar and got a
           | spare 5-6 figures to drop on it and wont miss that money.
           | 
           | hopefully this changes in the near future and it will be way
           | more affordable.
        
             | testing22321 wrote:
             | What planet are you on?
             | 
             | I'm in Canada, in a tight valley that snows a lot.
             | 
             | 7.8kw on the roof, even if I paid full price out of pocket
             | it would be fully paid off in 13 years, and then I get
             | $1000 a year of free power for another 20 or so years.
             | 
             | Even at full price it's a total no brainer.
        
           | casey2 wrote:
           | You'd probably be cutting it close with the life of the panel
           | (though maybe electricity price increase will save you) For
           | CO2 I think it pays itself off fairly quick. It's probably
           | the best investment you could make from a CO2 and local air
           | quality perspective, maybe if your insulation is very bad or
           | switching to a bike from a large personal car
        
       | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
       | I also am in the process of completing a solar install to get the
       | tax breaks expiring this year. Depending on total cost (i'm
       | DIYing and didn't predict all expenses) I can pay it off in 5-7
       | years. My power bill is up 50% in one year, and has been
       | increasing for years. With more datacenters taking up more power
       | (which we pay for), the bill's only gonna increase.
       | 
       | There is still time to complete a solar install yourself and get
       | federal+state tax breaks. Call up your energy provider, get
       | connected to their distributed generation department, and submit
       | the forms/documentation/plans they require. Then you build your
       | system, get it inspected, the utility approves it and completes
       | the hookup. ChatGPT makes all this fairly easy. I can upload my
       | forms and the process to GitHub if anyone wants to see the
       | process for NY state.
       | 
       | The simplest grid-tied system is solar panels + roof-mounting
       | equipment + microinverters + a combiner box + a disconnect
       | switch. This is enough to send solar power direct to the grid,
       | assuming your microinverter supports the standards your power
       | utility requires. You can do a PV+ESS (battery) system, but it's
       | a ton more expensive (even assuming you DIY). It should be
       | cheaper to do grid-tied projects, but many power utilities now
       | mandate new standards for grid-tied devices that only the
       | expensive inverters support.
       | 
       | If you do off-grid (which I believe there's still some tax breaks
       | for, depending), you can build a PV+ESS system much cheaper, as
       | the off-grid equipment doesn't require the more expensive
       | standards. We're talking $3.5k vs $9k for the same system.
       | 
       | It would also be cheaper if we supported balcony solar the way
       | Germany does. A big concern of mine is that poor people and
       | people in apartments (~40% of Americans live in apartments) won't
       | have the ability to supplement their bills with solar. If all the
       | people with money and land/houses switch to solar, and the poor
       | can't, the poor'll be propping up a big portion of the energy
       | sector themselves, which is unsustainable.
        
         | thelastgallon wrote:
         | I thought there are almost no incentives for DIY. Any
         | incentives usually come packaged with go through licensed
         | contractors, who usually charge 10X more than DIY. This is what
         | I've observed with most federal, state, city, utility
         | incentives.
        
           | seany wrote:
           | The fed tax credit ones are just part of your normal filing
           | with the IRS (5695). The state ones vary
        
       | jasonsb wrote:
       | This is not true. Energy prices are rising globally, even in
       | countries with few or no data centers and declining industrial
       | activity. It increasingly looks like a coordinated effort to
       | extract as much revenue as possible from consumers before
       | widespread adoption of solar power shifts the balance.
        
         | bdangubic wrote:
         | widespread adoption of solar is America is planned for 2097 or
         | thereabouts so few years left of extraction of revenue :)
        
           | jasonsb wrote:
           | It looks like the current administration hates solar, but
           | maybe things will change in a few years. California and Texas
           | are among the world leaders, so there's still hope.
        
             | kulahan wrote:
             | He likes nuclear, at least. Mega bonus. Solar is pretty
             | middling in comparison, so that's fine with me.
        
           | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
           | Well then what's _your_ mechanism for denial of the data
           | center premise?
        
           | antisthenes wrote:
           | I wouldn't be so pessimistic. This oil-interest friendly
           | administration won't last forever.
        
         | loeg wrote:
         | It is true, even if prices are rising in other places for other
         | reasons.
        
           | jasonsb wrote:
           | Those other reasons being none other than pure greed.
           | 
           | Total energy consumption has peaked in Europe in 2021 while
           | prices go up like they're building a data center in every
           | european country every 60 minutes.
        
             | estimator7292 wrote:
             | The AI/DC bubble is about pure greed. You're only about a
             | third correct
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _other reasons being none other than pure greed_
             | 
             | This is a good sign you're missing something. Particularly
             | when talking about a global and diversified commodity like
             | energy.
        
               | anon7000 wrote:
               | Every for-profit company operating under capitalism is
               | essentially required to be greedy in order to be
               | successful.
        
               | hackable_sand wrote:
               | That is broadly true, but we need more accuracy.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _Every for-profit company operating under capitalism is
               | essentially required to be greedy_
               | 
               | Every company (currently) depends on atmospheric oxygen,
               | that doesn't make O2 the cause of energy prices.
               | 
               | Greed exists. It always has. Unless energy distributors
               | have specifically become more greedy, recently and
               | globally, falling back on "greed" exposes missing steps.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | It is true.
         | 
         | > It increasingly looks like a coordinated effort to extract as
         | much revenue as possible from consumers before widespread
         | adoption of solar power shifts the balance.
         | 
         | That statement isn't wrong, but increased power prices on
         | consumers through socializing the costs of privatized benefit
         | data centers is the mechanism for this. Data centers are a tax
         | on consumers via their electric bills.
         | 
         | Citations:
         | 
         | Data Center Demand Fuels Surge in Electric Costs -
         | https://www.thesandpaper.net/articles/data-center-demand-fue...
         | - October 8th, 2025
         | 
         | AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring -
         | https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec...
         | - September 29th, 2025
         | 
         | How AI infrastructure is driving a sharp rise in electricity
         | bills - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-ai-
         | infrastructure-is-d... - September 5th, 2025
         | 
         | Data centers will cause higher electricity prices, study finds
         | - https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2025/08/28/data-
         | centers-... - August 28th, 2025
         | 
         | As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share
         | blame. States feel pressure to act -
         | https://apnews.com/article/electricity-prices-data-centers-a...
         | - August 8th, 2025
         | 
         | CMU: Data Center Growth Could Increase Electricity Bills 8%
         | Nationally and as Much as 25% in Some Regional Markets -
         | https://www.cmu.edu/work-that-matters/energy-innovation/data...
         | 
         | https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report
         | 
         | Energy prices are also flat in Europe, due to renewables
         | pushing out volatile fossil fuels.
         | 
         |  _Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs_ -
         | https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an...
         | (updated daily)
         | 
         |  _Household electricity prices in 1st half of 2025: -0.5%_ -
         | https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/...
         | - October 29th, 2025
         | 
         |  _Ember Energy: Decoupled: How Spain cut the link between gas
         | and power prices using renewables_ - https://ember-
         | energy.org/latest-insights/decoupled-how-spain... - October
         | 2nd, 2025
        
           | jasonsb wrote:
           | > Household electricity prices in 1st half of 2025: -0.5% -
           | https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-
           | news/... - October 29th, 2025
           | 
           | This statement from the EU is not just irrelevant, it's
           | deliberately misleading. Claiming a modest -0.5% change after
           | a staggering 40% price surge, while oil and gas prices remain
           | near 2019 levels and solar and wind capacity has grown
           | tenfold, feels like a slap in the face to consumers. And yet,
           | you're amplifying this technically true (but deeply
           | deceptive) narrative because it conveniently props up a
           | flawed argument.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | If consumers want cheaper power, they should advocate for
             | more rapid deployment of wind, solar, battery storage,
             | transmission and interconnectors, demand response, and
             | other technologies to make the price of fossil fuels
             | irrelevant in their electrical costs. Data centers are not
             | a component of cheaper energy bills, importantly. They are
             | demand, and compete with consumers for electricity in the
             | market. Fossil fuel prices are volatile; if you do not want
             | to be exposed to volatile fossil fuel pricing, do not use
             | fossil fuels in your electrical grid. It is unlikely fossil
             | fuels get cheaper in the future, as they will be starved
             | for investment. You cannot control the global fossil fuel
             | market (with the primary suppliers being OPEC+ and the US),
             | but you can control your domestic supply and demand for
             | energy. Europe fossil gas prices are never going to go back
             | down to pre-2020 levels as long as they rely on LNG imports
             | vs supply from Russia, for example. The faster Europe
             | pushes out fossil generation in its grid, the faster energy
             | prices go back down (cost of solar at a certain points
             | during the day goes to 0 once enough solar has been
             | deployed; eventually, the cost of generation becomes a much
             | smaller component of electricity prices, as the dominate
             | factors become distribution and infrastructure to get
             | generation to loads).
             | 
             | The above is crystal clear in the graphics in my citation
             | above "Ember Energy: European electricity prices and
             | costs."
             | 
             | Additional citations:
             | 
             |  _EU expects to add record renewable capacity in 2025,
             | industry sees headwinds_ -
             | https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-
             | regulat... - April 10th, 2025
             | 
             | > EU countries are expected to add 89GW of new renewable
             | energy capacity in 2025, including 70GW of solar and 19GW
             | of wind, according to Commission projections shared with
             | Reuters. The projections are based on industry data.
             | 
             | The White House's Bet on Fossil Fuels Is Already Losing - h
             | ttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-10-28/white-
             | ... | https://archive.today/vpvch - October 28th, 2025
             | 
             | > US financial markets are favoring renewable energy over
             | fossil fuels, with global investment for new renewable
             | energy development reaching a record $386 billion during
             | the first half of 2025.
             | 
             | > Revenue forecasts show a widening dichotomy between clean
             | and dirty industries, with renewables expected to report
             | 16% sales growth next year and 21% in 2027, while
             | traditional energy companies report 1% and 6% sales growth.
             | 
             | > Global renewable power is forecast to increase by 4,600
             | gigawatts by the end of the decade, an amount equivalent to
             | adding the generation capacity of China, the EU and Japan.
             | (my note: _4 years_ to add 4.6TW of renewables globally)
             | 
             | > Even as the US and European Union recently increased
             | their reliance on coal, solar dethroned the fossil fuel
             | mainstay last year, becoming the world's most installed
             | energy generation technology according to BloombergNEF's
             | 2025 Power Transition Trends report. "In 2015, solar power
             | seemed far from overtaking coal, constrained both by scale
             | and economics," BloombergNEF said in report this month.
             | Yet, within a decade, solar costs have fallen so
             | dramatically that the dynamic has entirely reversed. Solar
             | is now two times cheaper than the fossil fuel." So-called
             | green energy is the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy
             | power generator in the US, even without incentives,
             | according to Lazard Inc.
             | 
             |  _Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+)_ -
             | https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-
             | of-e... - June 2025
             | 
             | (enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 30 minutes to power
             | humanity for a year, and we're fighting over ancient
             | sunlight pumped from the ground; why? we already solved
             | fusion, just at a distance using the sun and batteries; 1GW
             | of solar is installed globally every 15 hours as of this
             | comment)
        
             | smcin wrote:
             | What's a short explanation of the discrepancy in EU
             | wholesale vs household electricity price changes, over the
             | period 2019-2025?
             | 
             | Wholesale increased 30% YoY 2025 over 2024 but household
             | didn't.
             | 
             | Realistically we should compare to 2019 (pre-Covid, pre-
             | inflation, pre-Ukraine war).
             | 
             | Many individual EU govts implemented retail caps, (sales)
             | tax cuts, and transfers. Where is this summarized at-a-
             | glance, by country, by year? Anything better than:
             | 
             | eurostat: "Electricity price statistics"
             | https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
             | explained/index.php...
             | 
             | "Winners and losers from the energy crisis: Policy lessons
             | from the Iberian electricity market" - Fabra, Leblanc,
             | Souza (2025) https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/winners-and-
             | losers-energy-cri...
        
           | phil21 wrote:
           | Do any of these links actually show the exact method that
           | datacenters are "socializing the costs" for energy
           | production? They tend to pay industrial rates like any other
           | industrial consumer would, and pay for their local
           | interconnect to the grid. Why they should be on the hook for
           | long distance transmission/etc. is unclear to me given that
           | every user on the grid takes part of that and has enjoyed
           | under-replacement electrical rates for decades. I have seen
           | the typical local tax abatement deals which I totally agree
           | need to be outright banned - but that's really the only thing
           | that's jumped out at me. Otherwise it's largely opinion
           | pieces parroting the same few background sources.
           | 
           | I'm not sure it's really a correct mental model to put 50+
           | years of lack of investment maintaining and expanding
           | transmission and grid capacity onto the industry that laid
           | that fact bare. From where I stand and the underlying
           | studies/reports I've personally read the root cause always
           | seems to be we're running out of power on a grid built by the
           | Greatest Generation and more or less zero work has been put
           | into expanding anything since. There were plenty of people
           | sounding alarm bells a decade ago before the latest
           | datacenter boom.
           | 
           | Then you get into NIMBY stuff, pie in the sky wishful
           | thinking re: dispatchable vs. intermittent power generation,
           | etc.
           | 
           | In the end if we want wealth, we need industry. Industry
           | needs cheap and abundant power to be competitive - AI
           | datacenter or Aluminum smelter. Energy consumption correlates
           | very strongly with wealth, and we've spent decades in the
           | margins messing around with efficiency gains vs. actually
           | investing in anything substantial. When your power company is
           | willing to give you a credit for a more efficient appliance
           | so they don't have to upgrade the grid to your neighborhood
           | you know things have jumped the shark and we are in
           | malinvestment territory.
           | 
           | I certainly agree with the argument that the datacenters
           | might not end up panning out as profitable investments for
           | society, but I'm at least hopeful that when the dust settles
           | we'll actually have augmented our electric grid and finally
           | started to take that looming problem seriously. We might be
           | left with something useful that lasts another 3 generations
           | when all said and done.
           | 
           | We were going to get here either way with population growth
           | and older power generation facilities not being replaced
           | faster than they are reaching end of life. Datacenters simply
           | brought it forward maybe a decade or so. Eventually you run
           | out of the previous generation's energy investments.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | > In the end if we want wealth, we need industry. Industry
             | needs cheap and abundant power to be competitive - AI
             | datacenter or Aluminum smelter.
             | 
             | Why do we want wealth when it is only going to the
             | wealthiest? AI data centers benefit Big Tech, its
             | employees, and its shareholders. So, who is "we"? I believe
             | I can make the argument that the majority of Americans do
             | not want this, only a privileged minority (ie those getting
             | wealthy from this current hype cycle).
             | 
             |  _Poll: American voters don 't want data centers built in
             | their communities_ - https://www.thecentersquare.com/issues
             | /energy/article_d5b564... - July 2nd, 2025
             | 
             | > Energy consumption correlates very strongly with wealth,
             | and we've spent decades in the margins messing around with
             | efficiency gains vs. actually investing in anything
             | substantial. When your power company is willing to give you
             | a credit for a more efficient appliance so they don't have
             | to upgrade the grid to your neighborhood you know things
             | have jumped the shark and we are in malinvestment
             | territory.
             | 
             | No longer true.
             | 
             | https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling
             | 
             | If AI data centers want power, they should be charged a
             | painful premium for it, paid out of the pockets of Big Tech
             | building it. They have the resources, clearly, from the
             | very obvious capital flows. Meta has issued its largest
             | bond offering ever, $30B, for its Hyperion project in
             | Richland Parish, Louisiana. Because when the bubble pops,
             | we're all going to be left holding the bag ("socializing
             | the losses"). We should not all have to suffer higher
             | electrical prices for the benefit of Big Tech and their
             | shareholders. They can pay up for the necessary power
             | infrastructure if they want the gains they're chasing.
        
             | foobarian wrote:
             | > They tend to pay industrial rates like any other
             | industrial consumer would
             | 
             | Well yeah, you don't need to look further than Econ 101 and
             | supply and demand. If demand goes up, prices go up.
             | 
             | The real problem is that the gains from the new demand
             | don't end up fairly distributed, which is bad but not
             | really directly related to the discussion.
        
               | phil21 wrote:
               | And then supply goes up. In theory.
               | 
               | Americans have coasted too long on other people's
               | infrastructure investment. It's basically run out. Time
               | to pay the piper or watch our quality of life decline.
               | 
               | I firmly believe datacenters are simply the scapegoat de-
               | jour. If this buildout hadn't happened it'd still be EVs
               | or "air conditioning use in the city" like it was
               | beforehand.
               | 
               | It's coming for us either way. At least this way there is
               | an industrial user subsidizing a portion of grid
               | modernization and energy generation tech.
               | 
               | I agree that wealth distribution is a problem. But I come
               | from a "there needs to be wealth to distribute to begin
               | with" standpoint. Degrowth isn't the way.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | https://www.economist.com/content-
           | assets/images/20251101_USC...
           | 
           | >The Economist has adapted a model of state-level retail
           | electricity prices from the Lawrence Berkeley National
           | Laboratory to include data centres (see chart 2). We find no
           | association between the increase in bills from 2019 to 2024
           | and data-centre additions. The state with the most new data
           | centres, Virginia, saw bills rise by less than the model
           | projected. The same went for Georgia. In fact, the model
           | found that higher growth in electricity demand came alongside
           | lower bills, reflecting the fact that a larger load lets a
           | grid spread its fixed costs across more bill-payers.
           | 
           | https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/10/30/the-
           | data-...
        
         | idiotsecant wrote:
         | This is inaccurate. In places with cheap fuel and steady load
         | the prices for power are rising no faster than inflation. In
         | places where fuel costs are increasing or tech companies are
         | forcing us to subsidize their moon race to nothing the prices
         | are increasing.
        
       | helsinkiandrew wrote:
       | Energy prices have risen roughly at the rate of CPI since 2022,
       | perhaps we got used to the relatively flat prices for the
       | previous decade:
       | 
       | https://www.apolloacademy.com/electricity-prices-have-grown-...
        
       | Ericson2314 wrote:
       | It is good the electricity demand is going up, because this will
       | help us electrify things.
        
       | twoodfin wrote:
       | I am not an expert in electricity generation or transmission, but
       | it does seem strange that this "data center scare" is happening
       | coincidental with (other?) big jumps in home electricity rates
       | that have nothing to do with data centers.
       | 
       | For example, Massachusetts rates are way up because New England
       | politicians have spent more than a decade fighting natural gas
       | infrastructure, especially pipelines that would bring cheap North
       | American gas vs. LNG that is in short supply post-Russia/Ukraine
       | war.
       | 
       | At the same time, MA politicians created the "Mass Save" program
       | that's effectively a giant boondoggle where utility ratepayers
       | are subsidizing fly-by-night "energy efficiency" contractors who
       | have no incentive to be efficient at all.
        
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