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County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

404media.co

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Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#51

Post by fluorinerocket »

dylan604 wrote: post #25
skeeter2020 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to mention you'll get much farther, faster & easier with timers on the lights than some sort of 100% voluntary participation dream.

ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have

Yes there are a bunch of terrible ideas in this thread. Video camera controlled lights? Yes f privacy of everyone to save a few bucks? well I think that was sarcastic

Motion controlled lights are always timed badly, incredibly annoying to have them switch off when you are sitting still working or taking a duece.

How about the janitor shuts off the lights after everyone goes home?

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#52

Post by WarmWash »

freediddy wrote: post #49

The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.

Consumers should consider cancelling their AI subscriptions if they don't like datacenters.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#53

Post by sunshinesnacks »

jonas21 wrote: post #29

This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on ele…

Capacity shortfalls and needs to conserve (i.e., asking customers to reduce usage) are not necessarily 1:1 with rate increases and overall electricity costs. Especially in the short term.

In other words, large “base loads” like data centers could both reduce the average power bill AND contribute to capacity shortages and load shedding.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#54

Post by mrweasel »

cmiles8 wrote: post #9

Do we scale back AI slop for a few days or pull power back from schools? Easy, kids can suffer, give them some ice water. The AI bubble can’t pop soon enough.

If we took the money Accenture spends on tokens so that their staff can convert PDFs to presentations(1) we can probably fund a school or two.

1) https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies...

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#55

Post by shagie »

dylan604 wrote: post #25
skeeter2020 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to mention you'll get much farther, faster & easier with timers on the lights than some sort of 100% voluntary participation dream.

ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have

I was a contractor at Sun in '97, Palo Alto campus. Initially they put me in a shared office, and that was ok. Later, I got moved to a hallway.

My machine had a hard reboot that first night... I lost my unsaved work and at that point I made it a point of religiously saving my work each evening when I went home... because each night my machine rebooted.

One day it was rather quiet. Might have been day before a long weekend, but it was a slow day in the building - very few people were walking about. I was working... and then my machine lost power. I stood up to figure out what was going on and my machine got power back. Ok... followed power cords to the wall. It was plugged into a gray outlet (rather than white outlet). The gray outlets were hooked up to the motion sensor that was for the hall lighting.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#56

Post by morkalork »

freediddy wrote: post #49

The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.

Curiously, also taking place in Virginia, I just a local newspaper was bought out and fired their few journalists after they did an investigative piece on a google datacenters being built in the community.

February: https://www.roanokerambler.com/water-authority-releases-goog...

April: https://cardinalnews.org/2026/04/14/former-roanoke-rambler-o...

This tells me they know what they're doing is unpopular and are willing to squash any opposition.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#57

Post by infecto »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
jonas21 wrote: post #29

This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on ele…

So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no. It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer i…

[flagged]

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#58

Post by WarmWash »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #30

The text of the article indicates that the county government sent this message to all government facilities, but I suppose that doesn't make for quite as sexy a headline and a public school is technically a government facility. I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world for them to illuminate that we don't need to do this?

News orgs hardly make any money. There are a few big players, but everyone outside that ring is borderline starving.

So the best way to keep money coming in is to read the vibes of social media, and print stories that fuel those fires. Basically manufacture stories using well established marketing and propaganda techniques to maximize click rates.

Ice cream man selling ice pops in the park becomes "Man seen using treats to lure young children to his van in the park".

Honest headline, criminally misleading takeaway.

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#59

Post by eskatonic »

arjie wrote: post #8

Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.

Hey, paying for blowing up towns is expensive! PG&E's gotta get the money from somewhere! /s

Re: County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

#60

Post by toomuchtodo »

infecto wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no. It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer i…

[flagged]

The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677039 - June 2026

Gartner Says Data Center Electricity Consumption to Grow 26% in 2026 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48665985 - June 2026

Nobody Here Wants the Data Center: An Oral History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662607 - June 2026

Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637512 - June 2026

Datacenter boom keeps dirty coal plants alive in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48465092 - June 2026

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447122 - June 2026

A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Massive Data Center Instead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446439 - June 2026

Data Center Operators Are Trying to Fix Their Water Use Problems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48401477 - June 2026

The US is now spending more on data center construction than on public transportation infrastructure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366144 - June 2026

Ohio hits pause on datacenter tax breaks draining its coffers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361555 - June 2026

Tracking at:

https://aidatacentermap.org/

https://www.datacenterwatch.org/

https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/

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