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Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

anthropic.com

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Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#51

Post by bigbadfeline »

epistasis wrote: post #15
Aurornis wrote: post #4

> Cover grid infrastructure costs. We will pay for 100% of the grid upgrades needed to interconnect our data centers, paid through increases to our monthly electricity charges. This includes the shares of these costs that would otherwise be passed onto consumers. This is great, but do they have an actual example of something that would have been passed on to consumers? Or is it just a hypothetical? In the location I’…

There's a huge diversity of pricing and regulatory schemes across the US. I think you skepticism is well placed in general, because where I live in California the price increase has been almost entirely from bad grid maintenance policies of years past but people come up with random other excuses. However there are some examples where increased demand by one sector leads to higher prices for everyone. The PJM electric…

There's only one way to resolve this - datacenters to build their own energy generation, not connected to the grid, just local. Otherwise, they'll muddy the water to no end until they manage to saddle the rest of us with their energy costs.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#52

Post by Ekaros »

Faaak wrote: post #48
cranium wrote: post #41

Electricity price is a weird beast. Everyone has to pay the price of the most expensive electricity source (generally gas plants) that was recruited to respond to the power demand. It means that during a spike the electricity price can double or triple. What I infer from Anthropic post is that they will estimate the energy price as if they weren't using it and pay the difference if their use upped the price.

That's for the spot price. If you have bought futures then that won't impact you

Shouldn't future contract sellers be smart enough to take these aspects in account? So you might not pay the spot price. But overall you will cover it. As those selling futures are there to make money. So they charge more than they pay for the power.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#54

Post by delaminator »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #47

Please do hang your datacenters in space so as not to piss away your waste heat in our rivers, soils or atmosphere. Go to the bathroom upstairs, don't use our ecosystem as your latrines if you can direct it straight to the CMB.

The US consumes 100 million aluminum soda cans per day.

We lived without aluminum soda cans for 100k years

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#55

Post by pbmonster »

bob1029 wrote: post #45
cranium wrote: post #41

Electricity price is a weird beast. Everyone has to pay the price of the most expensive electricity source (generally gas plants) that was recruited to respond to the power demand. It means that during a spike the electricity price can double or triple. What I infer from Anthropic post is that they will estimate the energy price as if they weren't using it and pay the difference if their use upped the price.

Gas plants are only the most expensive in the simple cycle configuration. Combined cycle plants are competitive with other forms of baseload generation. The trouble is the response time. With day ahead forecasting, we can try to turn that peak load into base load. Grid operations are a non trivial part in how this AI energy situation plays out.

Batteries are an even bigger deal. You can completely stop building single stage peaker gas turbines when it gets economical to just drop a 2GW / 1 GWh battery pack next to every gas plant. When demand spikes, you just discharge the battery while you heat soak the steam turbine and the drum to prepare it for increased load.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#56

Post by venk12 »

We've moved past asking where the energy comes from or how our planet will survive this critical phase.

These days, it's about framing - every country is scrambling to up their game just to stay in power. The companies that are riding this wave are spending millions in marketing, lobbying and billions on consuming energy so that they can make trillions in valuation.

I am also an ardent user of AI - but sometimes I do feel guilty when I use so many tokens - because I know I am burning energy, and feeding part of this mission. If there is a solution, I would like to be a part of it.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#57

Post by DoctorOetker »

delaminator wrote: post #54
DoctorOetker wrote: post #47

Please do hang your datacenters in space so as not to piss away your waste heat in our rivers, soils or atmosphere. Go to the bathroom upstairs, don't use our ecosystem as your latrines if you can direct it straight to the CMB.

The US consumes 100 million aluminum soda cans per day. We lived without aluminum soda cans for 100k years

You can't compare soda cans with computational results, we can't teleport soda cans up and down cheaply, but we can cheaply beam data up and down.

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#59

Post by pbmonster »

actionfromafar wrote: post #50
exabrial wrote: post #33

One of the potential upsides of AI in the USA is we'll bring down electrical prices compared to something like China. Power has to be abundantly plentiful and concentrated. Maybe then, we could afford to smelt an ingot of aluminum in the USA. Until then, I guess we're just sadly just burning coal to create cat memes. I hope Anthropic can lead the charge. Crypto was already a massive setback in terms of clean power, A…

How will that happen? China is building more generation as we speak. And I mean a lot . The gap is widening and the rate of change is even worse, thanks to "clean beautiful coal" or whatever Trump said.

Yeah, absolutely no way to bring down power prices when compared to China. They installed over 400 GW (peak) of new renewable capacity in 2025 and show no signs of intending to stop.

But still, it's possible that a smaller, dirtier build-out in the US will significantly drop prices relative to today, and certainly relative to the rest of the world (which is failing spectacularly at building out power infrastructure).

But yes, the only way you're ever going to smelt Aluminum in the US again is if you have customers who can't/won't buy Chinese Aluminum. And even then, worth keeping an eye on the richer Arabs states. They're quickly roofing over their deserts, and certainly don't worry about local NIMBY opposition to power lines...

Re: Covering electricity price increases from our data centers

#60

Post by clarionbell »

actionfromafar wrote: post #50
exabrial wrote: post #33

One of the potential upsides of AI in the USA is we'll bring down electrical prices compared to something like China. Power has to be abundantly plentiful and concentrated. Maybe then, we could afford to smelt an ingot of aluminum in the USA. Until then, I guess we're just sadly just burning coal to create cat memes. I hope Anthropic can lead the charge. Crypto was already a massive setback in terms of clean power, A…

How will that happen? China is building more generation as we speak. And I mean a lot . The gap is widening and the rate of change is even worse, thanks to "clean beautiful coal" or whatever Trump said.

You are aware that China is building dozens of new coal power plants right? Just this year they have commissioned 50.[1] Granted, it's less than before, but still much more than other developed countries.

[1] https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/china-building-c...

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