Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 201 posts

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

#91

Post by mrguyorama »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #82
sunshinesnacks wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work in industrial manufacturing and automation, several of my customers (those running steel foundries, aluminum die casting, plastic recycling and extrusion, and other power-intensive processes) represent a sizeable fraction of the utility usage in the small towns in which they're located. They often have an individual contract with the utility and participate in load regulation: when you need liquefy a few tons…

A lot of the problem right now is simply that new massive data centers are crying about being forced to.... pay their fair way.

They are mad that they aren't getting special treatment. They want to be treated better than the aluminum smelting plant.

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

#92

Post by infecto »

sheepscreek wrote: post #84
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…

> It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here. Henrico County currently has 37 data-centres with ~2 gigawatts capacity (expected to reach 3 gigawatts). Apparently, 1 MW can power approximately 834 homes annually. So 2 gigawatts would be closer to powering > 1.6 million homes. Surely, that kind of concentrated demand is going to affect electricity distribution costs for everyone, which is w…

The county narrative is cherry picking imo and poor journalism. They are part of PJM which contains one of the largest data centers hubs. The PJM grid serves something like 67mm residents. PJM also uses an annual forward capacity auction to set prices and that is at least partly to blame in price increases. They are trying to forecast peak demand 3 years in advance to set a price for power plant owners to stay online in the event of needing that peak capacity. It’s poorly designed and why they have had such significant spikes there.

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

#93

Post by phil21 »

cduzz wrote: post #65
infecto wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

Residential energy reduction is one small piece of it.

The de-industrializing of the US is a much larger reason we have been able to use cheap parlor tricks vs. actually building things for the past 40ish years.

Those cheap tricks are now running out of easy gains, and the chickens are coming home to roost. At some point you run out of your grandfathers investment into future society and basic infrastructure.

To anyone paying attention to it, this problem has been a slow moving disaster for decades. It’s effectively impossible to build net new generation or large scale transmission upgrades on any reasonable timeframe or budget. Even getting a wind farm in the south end of my state interconnected to the load center metro area in the central part of the state has been over a decade so far and no ground actually broken. Just constant NIMBY.

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

#94

Post by Tangurena2 »

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.

My state almost passed one such bill this year. Lobbyists got it put in time-out until this year's legislative session ran out.

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

#95

Post by shimman »

arlattimore wrote: post #90

I'm confused as to why they've allowed the data center power drain (which they knew was going to happen) to cascade into consumer power prices. Surely they should be charging consumers their existing price and charging the data centers an increased price based on their massive usage. Without some sort of mitigation, the costs keep rising and it'll drive families away from these cities and/or counties to avoid the cos…

You're confused why neoliberals want to give out more corporate welfare over helping citizens material needs?

This is literally what they believe in. This is what they have been doing for nearly 50 years. It's the entire purpose of neoliberalism: corporations are more important than citizens.

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

#96

Post by Tangurena2 »

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.

Enron managed to mangle/free-marketize California's electricity system. Utilities have to purchase electricity at market prices on an exchange that Enron built.

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

#97

Post by infecto »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #86
infecto wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, show one critical research paper that draws a solid link towards data centers and price increases. You linked to so many articles, many of which just spoke on demand increases. I absolutely believe that in some grids, data centers have driven some of the increase but you claiming that data centers are the only problem reads like those folks scared of solar farms being built. Just because you want to believe it…

Brookings: Confronting and addressing rising energy bills linked to data centers - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/confronting-and-addressin... - March 13th, 2026 Data Center Power Demands Are Contributing to Higher Energy Bills - https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-center-power-demands... - February 26th, 2026 ("As data centers expand nationwide, utilities are receiving hundreds of gigawatts in interconnectio…

Those read more like policy pieces. Correlations but not strong causation.

Brookings misses out on of the key failures in PJM which is how those terrible 3 year forecasts are causing issues with rates.

Again interesting from a policy perspective but they don’t reach your claim of data centers being the entire problem for retail energy rates.

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

#98

Post by mrguyorama »

infecto wrote: post #83
toomuchtodo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mental model of HN is there is a subset of forum participants who either don't believe the impact data centers are causing, or simply don't care. I’m not here to change hearts or minds (mental models are rigid, humans are emotion vs data driven); only to share data, and consume data. I believe the data shows data centers to have an outsized impact on the costs discussed. Others may disagree, but the facts are the…

Again, show one critical research paper that draws a solid link towards data centers and price increases. You linked to so many articles, many of which just spoke on demand increases. I absolutely believe that in some grids, data centers have driven some of the increase but you claiming that data centers are the only problem reads like those folks scared of solar farms being built. Just because you want to believe it…

Please tell me the mental model you have that you believe you can plug a 1GW load into an existing power network and not increase prices?

Do you think that distribution infrastructure required would be free? Do you think markets respond to new demand with new supply instantly?

The market incentive to increase generation is higher prices.

Data center investments, in terms of the energy they will require, far outstrip generation planning and buildout, and by a huge margin.

When you have a demand/supply equilibrium, and you drastically increase demand, what happens to the price?

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

#99

Post by conductr »

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?

How about just forget about this thread and don’t let it be a major annoyance. It’s a very minor annoyance. It would be a more widespread debate/discussion if so many people were upset by it. At the least, just admit you’re in the minority that are so upset by it and then just live with it anyways.

I say that to make a point about magnitude of annoyances. Sure it’s annoying. So are potholes.

It does seem like a slightly smarter device could be built. The times it happens to me, and I wave my hands in the air to turn lights back on, it’s not that annoying. When I’m there for 3 more hours and I have to do it every 5-10 minutes. That’s more annoying. So the simple thing to do is to program the thing to incrementally increase its timer length. 5/10/20/30 minutes might be less annoying. Also if motion is detected a short time after the no motion timer triggers, that’s probably a sign there was someone present the entire time. Can adjust the logic with that in mind too. The current devices are fine it’s the logic that was lazy.

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

#100

Post by barney54 »

infecto wrote: post #83
toomuchtodo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mental model of HN is there is a subset of forum participants who either don't believe the impact data centers are causing, or simply don't care. I’m not here to change hearts or minds (mental models are rigid, humans are emotion vs data driven); only to share data, and consume data. I believe the data shows data centers to have an outsized impact on the costs discussed. Others may disagree, but the facts are the…

Again, show one critical research paper that draws a solid link towards data centers and price increases. You linked to so many articles, many of which just spoke on demand increases. I absolutely believe that in some grids, data centers have driven some of the increase but you claiming that data centers are the only problem reads like those folks scared of solar farms being built. Just because you want to believe it…

So far, the data are clear--data centers are not increasing electricity rates. Those are the facts. https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/the-numb... This may change in the future, but so far, there is no statistically significant correlation.

Not only that, but states with increasing electricity consumption have lower rates. So it's possible data center will lead to lower rates.

Post reply on HN