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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'

#61

Post by dylan604 »

fluorinerocket wrote: post #51
dylan604 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's something to be said about having lights on in a room that is not occupied the entire time the lights are on. Before LED lighting, it was a decent attempt at reducing unnecessary lighting.

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

#62

Post by frantathefranta »

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?

404media is heavily invested in the anti-datacenter reporting. I'm still subscribed to their RSS feed and like half the posts are datacenter focused (often with a misleading angle).

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

#63

Post by slg »

WarmWash wrote: post #52
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.

Most consumers don't have any AI subscriptions. Lots of people's primary experience of AI is it being forced on them through integration into existing products and services, more "greed and hubris".

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

#64

Post by dylan604 »

shagie wrote: post #55
dylan604 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

While that is an interesting issue to deal with, I was totally lost at the concept of not saving before going home. I can't go five minutes without saving, and you were willing to leave the "room" without saving? That's just one of those things so outside my normal that I got lost in thinking about it especially as matter of fact as it was recited. You live in a different realm my friend.

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

#65

Post by cduzz »

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]

In the past couple decades, the vast majority of electricity demands have gone down due to modern substitutions for things people want being way more efficient. People use LED / CFL bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs, heat pumps instead of resistive heating for water heaters and house heaters, etc.

People have also deployed lots of solar to their houses.

So by every normal measure, just by looking around outside and evaluating how I live my life, even with an electric car, my power demands have gone way down.

So the fact that there's some gooner class stroking AI and crypto coins out their network ports and making my electricity more expensive, well, yeah, I'd say that nonsense is lots of externalities that should be better managed.

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

#66

Post by infecto »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #60
infecto wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

I only skimmed because what I saw was either no evidence or low. They to touched on demand but not immediately the correlation to price which is hard to connect without supply and other mechanics that go into different electric grid geographies. This feels very similar to the water argument or the anti-solar farm crowd. Lots of emotions and not as many facts. I am going to lean on the original research link.

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

#67

Post by toomuchtodo »

infecto wrote: post #66
toomuchtodo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I only skimmed because what I saw was either no evidence or low. They to touched on demand but not immediately the correlation to price which is hard to connect without supply and other mechanics that go into different electric grid geographies. This feels very similar to the water argument or the anti-solar farm crowd. Lots of emotions and not as many facts. I am going to lean on the original research link.

No worries, voters are engaged so I am not concerned. Data centers are a third rail in politics at the moment. I encourage politicians and lobbyists to voice their support so we know who they are, as elections have consequences.

‘Cost Me the Election’: Data Centers Trigger Voter Backlash - https://www.newsweek.com/cost-me-the-election-data-centers-t... - June 25th, 2026

Utah Senate President Loses Primary After Data Center Backlash - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/us/j-stuart-adams-utah-se... | https://archive.ph/MMot6 - June 24th, 2026

Where Republicans and Democrats stand on AI data centers - https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/where-republicans-and-democrats-... - June 12th, 2026

Americans Oppose AI Data Centers in Their Area - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48183512 - May 2026

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

#68

Post by sokoloff »

cwillu wrote: post #37
sokoloff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You dropped the time component from the first, so yes, the result is incomparable. “Power spent on lighting worstations while vacant” is energy

Assume that each workstation is lit by 100W of lighting and is vacant 18 hours per day (to make the math easy).

I claim that's 75W of power that could be reclaimed by turning off a 100W load 75% of the time. Explain how you get to energy or how I dropped time, please.

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

#69

Post by genewitch »

slg wrote: post #63
WarmWash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most consumers don't have any AI subscriptions. Lots of people's primary experience of AI is it being forced on them through integration into existing products and services, more "greed and hubris".

i, an avid AI user, have never paid a subscription, as a point of data!

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

#70

Post by mwigdahl »

jimmydddd wrote: post #38
preinheimer wrote: post #7

You want to use a lot of electricity? Great! We sell electricity. We will need cash in advance to handle some upgrades, rather than passing those costs on to other rate payers.

Exactly! Everyone's been conditioned that Data Centers = higher electric bills for residents. Of course, another option is for politicians to put any added costs on the data center companies. One tech guy even proposed, in order to gain wider acceptance, having the data center companies pay the whole electric bill for the town, so that data centers = 0 electric bills for residents.

Was that tech guy a crypto miner by chance?
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