fireman15 wrote: “Data centers represent a massive, sudden demand shock to the grid. Because they consume so much power, utilities are being forced to build brand new substations, high-voltage transmission lines, and expensive new generation plants just to keep the lights on.”
Those costs are ultimately paid by the data centers and once paid result in lowered costs for all. Besides those are necessary improvements if we want a robust grid. This is no different than the expansion of any public utility to service real growth. I do not see anyone opposing new homes because they will ultimately require construction of additional sewer systems, roads, and an expanded grid. The opposition to data centers is exactly like the Luddites opposing new factories.
You are operating with complete ignorance of basic economics and how public utility regulation actually works. Data centers do not pay for all those upgrades. Under standard utility laws, massive capital expenditures like new high-voltage transmission lines and new power plants are added to the utility's ‘rate base,’ meaning the cost is socialized across every single customer on the grid. Captive residential ratepayers are actively paying for the infrastructure that these tech companies require.
Furthermore, comparing a commercial data center to a residential housing development is a ridiculous false equivalence. A single modern AI data center can consume as much electricity as hundreds of thousands of homes combined. When a new housing development goes in, the developers pay connection fees and the new families pay standard rates that naturally fit into steady municipal growth. Data centers represent an unprecedented, overnight demand shock that swallows up entire regional power supplies.
Your ‘Luddite’ label is insulting along with being rooted in the idiocy that you have demonstrated here on multiple occasions. Objecting to families having their monthly utility bills driven up to subsidize the profit margins of multi-trillion-dollar tech corporations is not an opposition to technology. It is an opposition to corporate welfare.”