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Posted on 07/27/2025 12:36:40 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The data centers required for Big Tech are driving up electricity demand — and prices.
This summer, across a vast stretch of the eastern United States, monthly home electric bills jumped. In Trenton, New Jersey, the bill for a typical home rose $26. In Philadelphia, it increased about $17. In Pittsburgh, it went up $10. And in Columbus, Ohio, it spiked $27.
Few customers were happy, of course, but even fewer knew exactly why the rates had climbed so quickly.
“I never know why it goes up,” said Vicki Miller, a retired secretary in Columbus. “But I can adjust the thermostat to save money — I freeze in the winter and roast in the summer.”
This time around, though, it is possible to trace the price hikes in these cities to a specific source: the boom in data centers, those large warehouses of technology that support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other Big Tech wonders. They consume huge amounts of electricity, and, as they proliferate, the surging demand for electricity has driven up prices for millions of people, including residential customers who may not ever use AI or cloud computing.
In Columbus, for example, households on the standard plan of the local utility began paying about $20 more a month as of June — or $240 a year — because of the demand from data centers, according to a calculation based on figures from an independent monitor overseeing the region’s energy auctions and the local utility, AEP Ohio.
The ranks of the companies building the data centers — Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon — include some of the nation’s biggest and most prosperous companies, and many affected residents resent having to pay more because of the tech companies’ rising electricity demand. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos...)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Is this where people get hooked up to the computers like batteries?
So are the climate change nimrods protesting that AI growth will increase the earth’s temp substantially because of the increased power required for it and casting themselves down the cooling towers at those power plants to prove their point?
I believe Virginia law requires infrastructure costs to be spread among all customers. Except that the infrastructure improvements are being driven by the data centers which, on top of NOT having to cover more of the costs due to THEIR demand, they also get bulk electric rates. Some system we got...
Washington Compost always lies and has an agenda.
I asked Grok: Why does AI require so much electricity?
AI requires significant electricity due to the immense computational power needed for training and running large models. Training involves processing vast datasets through complex neural networks, often on specialized hardware like GPUs or TPUs, which are power-hungry. For example, training a single large language model can emit as much CO2 as a transatlantic flight, with data centers consuming hundreds of megawatts. Inference—using the model for tasks like answering queries—also demands constant computation, especially for real-time applications. Cooling systems for these data centers add to the energy load. As AI models grow larger and more widespread, their energy consumption scales, often outpacing efficiency gains.
“Cooling systems for these data centers add to the energy load.”
There have also been issues with nearby property water wells being less productive, as well as municipal water costs increasing.
“The AI explosion means millions are paying more for electricity”
Every word of this article is a lie. Connecticut now has .05 kwh charge for renewable energy, which pays people who have solar panels for the electricity they generate when it is not needed. We buy it anyway. They have a .04 charge which goes to pay the electric bills of people who claim they don’t have any money. This charge was introduced as a pandemic measure, but when the pandemic ended, they kept the charge. Makes my blood boil that the media can lie, lie, lie and no one calls them out. 35 percent of all electric bills in CT go for renewables and welfare. AI has nothing to do with it.
Electric cars are likely the bigger problem now.
An exception should be made for AI data centers.
They must supply their own power.
Electrical rates have gone up due to the manmade weather change fraud.
“The AI explosion means millions are paying more for electricity”
so insane power price increases have nothing to do with shutting down coal plants across the nation and TRYING to replace with ridiculously expensive and unreliable windmills and solar-absorbers ...
Its not AI, its the greenie failure
They are reopening Iowa’s only nuke plant (and doubling its capacity) to power 5 new data centers in Cedar Rapids. Supposedly they are tapping a deeper aquafer than we use. Hopefully our wells won’t be affected.
Probably a combination of AI data centers supplying their own power and AI getting power from the grid.
Either way over the long term I suspect most if not all people will be affected by AI one way or the other. Of course over the long term we will all be dead.
It’s the “green” windmills and solar cells driving up power prices. Kill your supply and replace it with intermittent, unreliable wind and solar backed with federal subsidies and you get high priced power.
But, wait! There’s even more!! You can look forward to 800 hours of outage every year and you’ll be begging for power at any price. That’s coming soon in several regions of the USA.
There are 8,760 hours in a year. That means your power will be off over two hours per day year on average every day of the year.
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