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As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act (apnews.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 58 points 1 year ago (44 children)

how can they get away with this? Are data centers not paying their bills?

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  • [–] [S] 93 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    The way utility rates are set allows them to spread costs onto residential ratepayers instead of bearing it directly.

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (17 children)

    What? That doesn’t make any sense.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago* (15 children)

    It's essentially supply and demand. If the data center is willing to pay more, then everyone has to pay more. I hate it.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Places like data centers don't pay the same rate that individuals do though. They get an industrial rate.

    Basically they cut them a break so they can fuck you. The supply is more More than enough and the only demand that increased was from corporate interests.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That is regional. In Europe commercial/industrial prices are usually higher, especially in times of crisis, because residential power has a price cap. Damn socialists and their regulations!!1!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Yes it is! And this article is written about States being in the United States and how its affecting that infrastructure.

    Trust me, I know shit is better everywhere else. My comments are about the current state of USA electricity and how its being affected by the content in this article. Which takes place in the USA.

    I'm sure in the land where they actually care about people its different.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I don't think this is true, although maybe in some places.

    For example, the more gas a business uses in the Netherlands, the less they generally pay per unit. This is terrible for our carbon footprint, where we basically subsidize the worst emitters. 😟

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

    It's more that they get a bulk discount, whereas Jamaica m individuals don't, and apparently they can set the bulk discount below the generation cost.

    It's incredibly dumb and why I'd like there to be more choice. Instead of one company handling supply and service for industry and residents, there should be multiple companies handling supply and an independent org handling service. Basically, the suppliers would bring the electricity to the cities, and cities would handle it from there. Then they need to compete for the lowest cost energy, customers can pick which suppliers they'd like, and prices per KWh would be static regardless of customer (the only discount for large customers would be service).

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Quite a few states actually have systems like this. In which individuals can choose their power generator at will. It is nice as it increases competition and lets you tailor energy use to your wants.

    If you want 100% green, switch to a generator that does that. If your default utility gets too expensive, switch to a cheaper one, etc.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    The closest we have is buying green energy in blocks, which means you reserve that much generation capacity. In theory, they have to build more capacity if demand outstrips suooly, but if they produce more than is reserved, they just sell at the normal (lower) rate. If you use less than you reserve, you just pay more.

    It's a wonky system and I'd prefer to choose by provider instead. At least our electricity provider has to ask the state legislature for permission to raise prices, so that's nice. Energy here isn't all that expensive (around the nationwide median) and moving toward green energy, but I think I'd prefer a more competitive system.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    This isn't a choice issue. It should be state owned and operated in a non-profit capacity, and everyone should pay their fair share.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    I don't know about you, but I haven't had a great experience with government run services. Government is better at owning and setting rules about things than actually operating them. If it's possible to have competition, then the government playing referee seems to provide a better result.

    If a monopoly is unavoidable, then yeah, the government should be that monopoly. But as long as it's feasible to have at least three competitors, it should be privately run.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Would you prefer the police and fire department were privately run?

    It would be the same service, with the same employees and facilities.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    No, because there's not a reasonable way for them to compete. You can't really have multiple police forces, and they'll be motivated to generate profit instead of protect the people.

    You can have multiple electrical suppliers. You can have a coal plant, solar and wind, and nuclear all competing for customers so they're motivated to make their electricity more appealing. If you pair that with things like carbon taxes, people will choose the more efficient option, and you can mix and match large and small suppliers. You need a central authority to manage the infrastructure, but you can reasonably have diversity in generation.

    Just think if the average person could sell their excess solar generation (possible in some areas), their EV as battery capacity at night, etc, more people would want to generate renewable power. If you have that type of check against larger players, they'll have to keep their prices competitive.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    It makes sense if you're a greedy piece of shit that values corporate investment more than the people you serve.

    I'm glad you see that it doesn't make sense though it means you are a good person.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Bigger clients negotiate bulk discounts, basically. But the other factor at play here is supply and demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price for the supply. Household demand has remained more or less the same, but because data center demand has shot up, prices have too.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    As prices go up it becomes more attractive to build more generating capacity. When capacity goes up prices will come back down.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    "When capacity goes up prices will come back down"

    Loooooool. I know that's how its supposed to work but you're mistaken if you think that they will ever decrease the price. That almost never ever happens.

    My electric company (which is the only one in my area) even started fucking mining bitcoin and they hit us with a surge pricing model charging us even more for the electricity we use not only during daytime but also during summer. I'm sure they say some bullshit about capacity loads or whatever.

    They sure got enough capacity to mine the fuck out of that bitcoin though.

    Greedy fucks, all of them.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    My prices went down in the last two years by almost half. I could get a time based tariff and sometimes buy electricity at negative prices. Of course I have like 400 different electricity providers I can choose from... Monopolies are... not great.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    It depends and varies wildly based on your area and how the electricity is actually sold.
    If they are using an energy stock exchange, as many places are, then increased capacity, especially increased renewable capacity, greatly reduces the price per kWh because the price depends on the most expensive method of generation.
    And because renewables always offer their electricity for free to the exchange, as they don't have any fuel etc costs, you sometimes end up in the peculiar situation like here in Finland (and in the entire NordPool area) tomorrow between 13:00 and 16:00, where electricity is literally priced at 0€/MWh, as there is enough renewables to cover it all.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Free electricity is cool unless you produce solar. Everyone who does will be paying to produce electricity because the grid fees go both ways (produce or consume) lol

    Luckily I do not produce solar. Wanted to install, but lately I've been thinking... With how NordPool works, the more common solar becomes, the less attractive it'll be because there'll be more and more periods where you have to PAY to produce electricity. Or disconnect your panels from the grid every time that happens? AKA whenever solar is the most effective...

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    From what little I've researched about privately producing back to the grid here in Finland, it really didn't make much sense. You get terrible rates and as you said have to pay the transfer fees too. It's priced in a way that they clearly would rather you didn't do it at all.

    But the NordPool isn't really a system designed with tiny private producers in mind. Price goes to zero, or sometimes even negative, exactly to try to prevent having to pull electricity production down as that's expensive and complicated. It's clear to see that it isn't a sustainable model in the long run, but hopefully it incentivises companies to build the solution - storage - to make use of all that "wasted" energy and stabilize the price and market.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not familiar with NordPool specifics but this is exactly right and is playing out in California and elsewhere too. Basically just the duck curve. Storage is all but required as solar covers 100% of midday load.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Long term it's a good thing. Medium term it means you'd be an idiot to install solar, unfortunately.

    I'm not familiar with the Cali system, but if it's day-ahead pricing then it'd be similar to Nordpool.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Ideally anyway. Government interference can always screw it up and create barriers to competition.

    Where I live (Ontario, Canada) on-peak electricity prices have pretty much exactly kept pace with inflation over the past 20 years, so in effect electricity costs have not gone up.

    Off-peak prices have crept up more than that but solar power doesn’t help with off-peak generation at all. Wind turbines do produce more at night but we’ve had government subsidies to encourage building wind power capacity and those subsidies result in higher wholesale prices for that power (actually above the off-peak prices consumers pay).

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    even under the assumption that they do pay the exact same prices as normal citizens (they don't). electricity prices will go up the more usage there is, as they mostly rely on limited factors.

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  • [+] -52 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    It is like Obamacare. You have a person who smokes, gets drunk, eats a lot of sugar, don't exercise, you pay for their bill through hiked premiums, and overutilization. Hopefully, that sinks in.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In the countries where healthcare has existed (and worked) for decades, there are additional taxes to alcohol, sugar, tobacco, petrol to cover for this.

    And also yeah, and I have no problem whatsoever knowing that a small part of my salary goes towards saving the life of people who wouldn't be able to afford private healthcare. That's called empathy - and I wish that'd sink in as well.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    isn't that the reverse argument? Typically only <20% of people take the healthcare system for granted whilst everyone else pays their dues. Here, it's everyone pays their electricity bills but 1 absolute behemoth of a customer hordes the resources, and instead of being cut off or denied service as would be typical in other services, they pay hand over fist to get first dibs on all resources, whilst passing off the cost to everyone else

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