Submitted 3 weeks ago by Artisian@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Datacenter. The end.
Datacenters build their own micro power plants for uptime anyway. This is a line item and an investment. Little Timmy’s parents need to feed little Timmy… Not finance some techbro or deluded CLevel’s fomo into the next big bubble.
It’s interesting to me that we don’t do this for all industries. Like, if a big auto manufacturer or textile company sets up shop, the local power company is compelled to build more power plants for them (sometimes the power company eats the cost, sometimes a deal with the provider, etc. See the article). Monopolies are weird.
Most industries create jobs. Datacenters do not.
You’d be supprised to see how many industries probably have some sort of backups in place for power … But it’s typically more costly to run and they may not have plans in place for extended outages. At the end of the day it comes down to money.
What’s frustrating about the current situation with the power companies is people just are unaware they are getting bled or don’t have options for recourse… Whereas monopolies and large companies are getting (fuck if I know why) white glove treatment and discounts. It makes little sense to be deferential to these massive companies - as while they promise jobs, economic benifits, and the moon itself… Data shows this rarely materializes. Its baffling.
The data center provider. Why is that even a question?
So our utility came out and said they have to raise residential rates by a rather large amount, largely because so many data centers are demanding so much power they need to upgrade, so residential rates have to fund that…
Why raise residential tares and not commercial / industrial rates?
Oh, because businesses are subsidizes through taxes. Of course.
If you read the article, it’s because power companies are monopolies and so we’ve regulated them rather harshly. They are often compelled to build infrastructure to meet demand, for example. We don’t make the provider of a steel mill, housing builder, etc pay (generally).
And that’s weird, right? It’s one area of the market where we do a planned economy, and all states manage it differently. Now it’s being stress tested in a new way.
Poor people, naturally
The question was “who should”, not “who will”.
Poor people should pay because they keep voting for servants of the ruling class.
Obviously the public so that a few may get rich
As pointed out in the article, because datacenters are pretty fast to build, new power plants need to start construction roughly 1 year before the datacenter starts construction. But that leaves the utilities with alle the risk, unless a robust agreement is in place with the datacenter.
What happens if several power plants start construction, but the AI bubbles bursts, and the datacenters are cancelled?
Then we get the actual capacity we need at the prices we can afford. Our power grid is disappointing.
Are you suggesting we use government resources to benefit the masses? Whose side are you on anyway?
But that leaves the utilities with alle the risk,
Not if you make the data center pay for it.
If a consumer wants a utility upgrade, the consumer pays all costs upfront. I know this because my neighbor works for the power company and was trying to get gas lines run to our neighborhood. The cost the power company would charge us was hundreds of thousands which even divided by the number of homes meant it would never pay off vs outlr existing cost for propane delivery.
(Made my day that somebody read the article! I feel like these technical pieces flounder in obscurity.)
Raise taxes on the working class.
I would suggest requiring these datacenters to also invest in sufficient green energy to power them.
It is very interesting to me that we don’t make this requirement for all large power users - factories, big suburbs, etc. Because we give power companies a monopoly (but don’t put them under state control), we often let big building projects force them to expand infrastructure (and then sell access as they do). So this is a whole weird thing with capitalism meeting very regulated monopolies, in a thousand different systems cause every local has different rules.
The thing that’s breaking our systems here isn’t that datacenters are big power users. It is that they can be built so quickly.
I’m surprised we didn’t make ‘bring your own power’ a rule before; I guess it’s infrastructure that generally is useful for many people to timeshare, and often isn’t fully used by just one party? Factories turn off some nights, for eg. And maybe it would be bad to have multiple power providers independently pumping power out?
The people who want more power. Ie, the data center.
You want it? You bought it.
According to betteridge's law: No.
Obviously the honest taxpayer and not the greedy billionaires.
xenomor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I just don’t understand why this is a difficult question. Make the data centers fund their own power needs. End of story.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes. They can build their own sources of power of their own choosing. Or put more resources into doing data centers more efficiently, their choice.
123@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
If you leave it up to them, they’ll start burning that toxic cheap marine diesel to power the generators. Its not like its hard to get some states to give you exceptions for pollution with some key donations.
Noise pollution around data centers is very bad already based on some news reports, they’ll push the limits to save a dollar.
aramis87@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Make the data centers build their own power plants. Then they get all the risk and all the reward.
Make them put the power plant right next to the data center, that way they're not stressing out the rest of the grid. And that way the exact same community that gets the benefits of hosting the data center also gets the environmental costs of the power plant.
frongt@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
In theory it’s great. In practice it’s “oops we had a big spill and went out of business, guess the EPA will have to use taxpayer money”.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
When unemployment is low in the construction sector, we can’t have them pay. When they pay, they’ll outbid for workers who were previously building homes and public infrastructure. We’d either have to outbid cloud for these workers, or we’d pay by having higher housing prices and crumbling infrastructure, which incurs other social costs. Real resources are finite.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The resources are finite whether the taxpayers pay or the corporation that needs the electric upgrade pays.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Wouldn't the market just expand to absorb the extra demand?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Then they will build coal plants.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Mandate renewable energy and van open loop water cooling. Can’t afford it? You don’t need a datacenter then
thejml@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
This is where requirements as part of the data center zoning and purchase agreements comes in.
Artisian@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I find the different ways places answer this question really interesting. By this, I mean the systems we’ve had in place, the committees and applications and rules, for power providing the whole time.
It is interesting because power is a privately owned monopoly that we regulate to the extreme; so we get all sorts of weird relationships and arrangements. Now we see them all getting stress tested.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well put.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s actually not as simple as that, assuming they’re connected to the grid. Power transmission is costly too, which needs to be accounted for, not just the power consumption/generation. Them being off-grid also isn’t really reasonable because they’d need a lot of redundant power sources and backups, which would be better as part of the grid.
They should still be paying for all this, but estimating the real cost is non-trivial.
Antaeus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Agreed.