Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

That's why these independent counsels are pretty important such as the Maryland agency mentioned in this article. Since utilities at least on the distribution side are pretty much monopolies people have no choice but to pay the agreed rate.

Because unlike many commodities, electricity, once generated, is hard to store, yet supply must match demand in real time. You need to meet peak demand, even if normal usage is not as high. If you pay purely for usage, that might not send enough price signals to ensure that you have the necessary capacity when you need it. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/enn/explainer-how-capac... has a more detailed overview of how markets are being structured to provide capacity, separate from actual generation.

This is the craziest part. We've long had publicly subsidized private projects, or corporate tax breaks given to entities with the fig leaf explanation that the projects will bring economic activity, or jobs, or some sort of long lasting, durable benefit, or even at its most craven, keep a stupid populace happy that their favorite sportsball team hasn't left their town.

Datacenters do none of these things. They don't bring any true employment numbers to make a difference. They don't materially improve their surroundings. They don't increase land value. They aren't an attractive neighbor. They don't benefit the tax base, not least of all when you're doling out massive tax breaks and deferments... no one _wants_ them, so it's not even like this is a "well, you're just not a Buffalo Bills fan, but the rest of us are, get on board!" situation.

There is zero net benefit to the citizens in these places to welcome these facilities to their town. Shorter latency to their chatbot of choice, maybe? But in any practical, moral hazard sense, these are all pure net negatives for the communities, and it's wild that these leaders think they're some sort of marquee, glamorous, prestigious win of a project.

Compare this with other, things-that-rhyme-but-aren't-the-same projects, like the TSMC fabs in Phoenix: these projects are bringing a ton of high-paying, new jobs (and, somewhat controversially, an expat community from Taiwan to help onboard them in the meantime), but they're also delivering in other economic terms because of the supply chain's knock-on effects: the TSMC fabs further the reputation of Phoenix as the Silicon Desert that Intel, OnSemi, Microchip, and Motorola had long been working towards, but at a much more amplified scale, and in a truly meaningful capacity. The money being spent here is staying here, and driving some real practical benefits. But even still, it's an open conversation around how careful we need to be with the water usage of these fabs (though TSMC is aiming towards 90%+ recapture in the next few years, I think it's ~60% right now), and other considerations... they are still, on balance, bringing 6,000-12,000 direct jobs, and even more indirect jobs as they continue to expand.

These datacenter projects don't even do _that_ well. They're just upsetting the power grid and creating unfortunate microclimates for the immediate vicinity for a handful of NOC jobs. (And some itinerant construction and engineering jobs.)

Humans are so annoying, can't they move away from data centers?/s

The rumor is that many of the data centers have been shopping around in different utility markets, trying to assess where they could get the best/fastest build out. However, they are never informing the utility of sites which they will not develop. So some of these massive data centers may be getting double or triply counted for electricity demand projections.