• Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    Can anyone ELI5 why the cost gets passed on to people not even consuming the majority of the energy?

    • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      edit-2
      8 days ago

      A lot of the uptick is probably at least “blamed” on the need for infrastructure upgrades. These “benefit everyone” even though they are caused by basically one client, so the price increase to cover the upgrades is applied to everyone.

        • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          17
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 days ago

          neither of you understand how this works

          Was it the “ELI5” part that gave it away, Einstein?

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 days ago

          we willingly handed over the keys to the city

          I’ve been screaming that the power and water and cost issues are failures of our local governments. No, it’s not capitalism, socialists can be bought and paid for as well. No, the feds need do nothing, city and state governments should handle their unique issues. Yes, we need to vote out or city and county councilmen who allow this horseshit.

          OK, I could easily argue for the state taxing the snot out of these data centers. Seems a no-brainer.

        • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 days ago

          I’m open to alternative thoughts here but I legitimately feel your emotion may be clouding your writing, because I’m honestly trying, but while I think I get the direction you are trying to take the conversation it’s not entirely coherent to me. For as much as you wrote it feels like a few incomplete thoughts strung together.

    • Fermion@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      8 days ago

      The supply side of power generation is coordinated by a bid system. So the cheapest sources are activated first. As demand goes up increasingly expensive forms of power generation are turned on.

      For daily and seasonal variation, this is fine. The amount of time that really expensive generation is active is only a small portion and the base rate can stay low. However, if you add a bunch of baseload without adding equivalent generation, your utility will be stuck buying at the top end of the capacity market auction. The datacenter will have negotiated a discounted rate though because constant demand is good for the utility in the long run. That leaves everyone else paying a big rate increase.

      Source: none given, but the capacity auction is a real thing, and the predicted behaviour of such a system can be reasoned.

    • Butterpaderp@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 days ago

      Because the companies building these data centers pay alot of money to not pay alot of money. Power bills, taxes, litigation, etc.