Comment by gruez

3 hours ago

>The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation - >Goldman Sachs economists forecast that data centers will account for nearly half of U.S. growth in power demand through 2030. As a result, they saw consumer electricity prices rising about 6% annually this year and next.

but it also cautions

>Even electricity accounts for only about 2.5% of consumer spending, according to the Labor Department.

Electricity has gotten more expensive, it's only growing twice as fast. It's also unclear how much of that it's due to AI, as goldman sacs claims. For instance, if you look at the BLS figures for electricity prices, it shows a huge jump in 2021-2022, well before the datacenter boom started. Others have mentioned rates are going up due to modernization efforts and/or the switch to renewables.

1 comment

gruez

infecto 3 hours ago

Thank you this. Super helpful. There were so many articles and most of them did not mention price I skipped through it aggressively.

I wish there was more science driven reports based on what’s really happening. So much of it seems to be spun into people’s emotions that’s it’s hard to make sense of it. The public energy companies like to blame data centers but then data in certain geographies suggest otherwise. There was a good semi analysis months ago on how pricing I believe in New England was less about data centers and more on how inefficient the forward auction was constructed for prices there.