Comment by cyanydeez
7 hours ago
They primary concern is these centers will force water and energy expansions and those will be equally split.
Like, you go with friends to a bar, do you want your check equally split or based on drinks had?
The infrastructure when exponentially above the norm should be paid by the heavy user. Currently, most utilities dont do that.
Power is metered.
If a facility is somehow getting subsidized by the rest of the ratepayers then it’s a pricing problem that needs fixing.
The issue is that we collectively decided to stop investing in energy infrastructure for 50 years or so, and now all that capital investment needs to happen at once. You can’t even build a transmission line in a reasonable timeframe due to the insane NIMBY veto we have given everyone.
Typically industrial consumers of electricity with predictable 24x7 demand are a good thing for an electric grid. They actually subsidize the rest, and that’s reflected in the lower cost per watt they tend to pay the utility.
If the entire interconnection is simply out of generation capacity that’s a much larger failure further upstream by regulators and voters who wanted their cake and to eat it too for many years. It’s coming for us either way if we want to remain a viable competitive economy on the world stage. You can only maximize financialization for so long until you need to start actually making stuff again.
> Power is metered.
Yes, a portion of power is metered costs. Often times (though I am not certain about this case), there are fixed costs that everyone pays a chunk of. If these sorts of projects aren't handled well, the fixed cost that a massive data-center pays may be disproportionate to he cost they incur on the system.