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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'

#131

Post by whimsicalism »

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.

> passing those costs on to other rate payers.

You are describing the normal process of purchasing things and how prices work. There is no nefarious passing on.

We should redistribute money from the wealthy to households, but I'm not sure if rate price controls beyond what already exists is the correct way to do it. The real issue with these data centers is tax jurisdiction shopping.

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

#132

Post by whimsicalism »

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…

This is just what happens with a demand shock in any context.

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

#133

Post by FireBeyond »

infecto wrote: post #92
sheepscreek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That might be so, but is also simplifying things a little too much and pointing to the issue.

"It's a poorly designed grid". PJM might serve 65M+ users, but 2GW isn't easily able to be shipped across their grid. Dominion is proposing a 180mi 525kV HVDC line (ironically enough, from southern VA to northern VA) that can handle up to 3GW. But that's a $5 billion project. That number goes up. A PJM project proposal to ship power from NJ to VA is in the order of $12B.

So yeah, the grid can handle it, but now you're foisting twenty billion dollars of costs on to your users for the benefits of 37 customers. That's a ... pretty raw ... deal for the rest of them.

(And yes, PJM already has a grid that can supply some of those needs, and the reality isn't proposing that they run a new HVDC line just for these projects, but the capacity has to come from somewhere).

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

#134

Post by whimsicalism »

larkost wrote: post #78
Quinner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because San Francisco subsidizes the rest of the state, PG&E is a state-wide utility. San Francisco is attempting to run its own utility, but is meeting resistance from PG&E and the parts of the state SF subsidizes.

I live in the Bay Area, and I think this needs a little more exploration. You are correct both in that PG&E spreads the costs around the state, and that San Francisco (and a number of other Bay Area cities) is exploring creating it's own utility and removing itself from PG&E (like Palo Alto already has done). It is a near certainty that power rates would be cheaper for these cities if they removed themselves from the…

Why should we subsidize sprawl & economically unsustainable areas to live?

That said, this is only part of the picture. The other big part is that California has very aggressive tort law and CA juries basically view PG&E as a giant piggy bank.

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

#135

Post by elgertam »

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…

As a Virginian, this is good information to have. I see a lot of ludicrous objections to data centers here (the most ludicrous being water consumption, when most of our data centers have closed-loop systems and regardless the humidity here isn't evaporating water).

I've suspected that the energy regulations and the ruling party's close connection with Dominion Energy (the Governor recently attempted to fire the chair of Virginia Tech's board and replace him with the CEO of Dominion) have had an impact on power use more than data centers themselves.

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

#136

Post by Legend2440 »

kibwen wrote: post #80
WarmWash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not sure if this is sarcastic, but there are effectively no consumers (as opposed to corporations) with AI subscriptions; the number of paid ChatGPT users is a rounding error. In the long run we should not expect the number of paid consumers for LLMs to be significantly greater than the number of paid consumers for search engines.

There are 50 million consumers with paid ChatGPT subscriptions as of Feb 2026.

This is already significantly greater than the number of paid subscribers to search engines. AFAIK that's just Kagi, and they only have ~100k subscriptions.

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

#137

Post by CrimsonRain »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #111
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…

I'm surprised that the 404 Media article does not mention anything about this. At least, searching for the word "Clean" did not return any results.

[flagged]

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

#139

Post by legitster »

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…

In the long run, green energy and data centers are ultimately going to be complimentary.

One of the biggest problems with investing in a renewable grid is curtailment and managing demand or production spikes. In California, they already have to turn off solar plants during peak hours to help manage overproduction.

Even if you have massive quantities of energy storage, you don't have enough "inertia" in the grid to keep power levels consistent as DC power sources flick on and off.

Data centers can act as massive variable loads that can ramp up or down that turn excess energy into something vaguely profitable. And they can also help to create demand for more supply of intermittent green energy sources.

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

#140

Post by infecto »

axus wrote: post #114
infecto wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a hard to answer because each grid will treat it differently. My own experience when trying to track some of this data down, DCs are largely having to do the same and that’s why a lot of the buildout includes behind the meter generation to make up for it. There is not a good picture in aggregate though so it creates all kinds of narratives.

The gas-powered generators are what makes a data center unpleasant to live by.

Hyperbole if I have ever seen it. Absolutely there are specific outliers (x ai) but this is not the norm.
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