You just admitted the exact point we have been making all along. Here is why spreading those costs out is so unfair to local homeowners and retirees:
1. Socializing Big Tech's Construction Bills
When a massive data center moves into a region, the power company has to build billions of dollars in new power lines, substations, and power plants to handle that gigantic load. Because those construction expenses are spread across all customer classes, the power company adds those bills to everyone's monthly statement. Local residents end up paying higher baseline rates to fund grid upgrades triggered entirely by Big Tech.
2. 24/7 Power Demand vs. Normal Home Use
A regular household uses power in normal daily cycles, like turning on the air conditioning or cooking dinner. A massive data center draws huge amounts of power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Forcing regular folks to share the bill for the new power generation needed to feed that nonstop demand is a direct subsidy to corporate profit margins.
3. The Real Impact on Seniors
To a multi-trillion-dollar tech corporation, higher power bills are just a minor cost of doing business. But when a utility spreads multi-billion-dollar grid expansion costs onto residential electric bills, it hits seniors and retirees living on fixed incomes right in the pocketbook.
Nobody is denying that costs get spread out. The issue is that local homeowners and retirees should not be forced to share the bill for heavy industrial grid upgrades built specifically to serve giant tech companies.
fireman15 wrote: “Of course costs are spread across both consumers and commercial users. That is literally the entire problem. You just admitted the exact point we have been making all along. Here is why spreading those costs out is so unfair to local homeowners and retirees:”
Why is this any different than spreading any of the costs of new roads, sewage, etc., of new subdivisions? Reminds me of the claims made by local residents against a road providing additional access across local mountain range, “I don’t want my taxes to go for a road to a golf course.” Of course that completely ignored all the new residential and commercial construction in that area. Deny as much as you like but it’s logically the same argument.