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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'

#181

Post by bryan_w »

philipallstar wrote: post #164
jlarocco wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason not to blame lobbyists as well. A lobbyist saying "it's just business," doesn't excuse them for being assholes.

Their job is to represent their company. It's like calling a defence or prosecution lawyer an asshole for taking their client's side. It's the judge's job to be impartial, not theirs. And it's the regulator's job to be impartial, not the lobbyist's.

You're assuming these people know what a lobbyist does beyond the edgey cynical definition they learned about when they were 13.

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

#182

Post by bryan_w »

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?

> I appreciate 404 media's mission but

Really makes you think: should you really support efforts like this when there are better and more honest groups out there? (Cough EFF *cough)

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

#183

Post by nonplus »

infecto wrote: post #179
nonplus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this is a difficult topic to simplify. "The grid can handle it" is almost always a * statement. Can it handle it today? What about next year with the approved interconnects? What about in 2030? Does "handle it" include summer load or just average, what if temps are 5 degrees hotter than power models ran? What if PJM can't solve it's high priority overloads this year? People want to talk about the grid as a bi…

Nobody has proven that those 37 customers are to blame compared to the poorly structured forward pricing system which is largely to blame for some of their recent pricing increases. Not sure where this grid can handle it narrative is coming from. Most of the woes in this article are cherry picked.

If you want to pretend the only source of information on this subject is the linked article I'm sure you can find many users here to debate within your arbitrary parameters.

Same goes for proof, which I'm sure would exclude power flow models if they were available for said debate.

Edit: We can agree the article is not comprehensive, and doesn't have data PJM and utilities have not published.

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

#184

Post by conductr »

dylan604 wrote: post #122
conductr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sligh…

Potholes are much more than just an annoyance. They can damage your car. Not sure where you live that potholes are mere annoyances, but where I'm from they can be quite large. To the point calling them potholes is stretching the definition. My mom used to joke that she wanted to throw in some water and a loaf of bread into some of them in case someone fell in. They can pop a tire, bend/crack a rim, and they can defin…

Potholes aren’t really the core of the annoyance, just like the lights, it’s the control mechanisms around them. Potholes are going to occur yet there’s no proactive repair response. Massive potholes you’re describing rarely show up over night, and it’s very likely many city employees drive over them daily (trash trucks, police, code compliance, water services, etc).

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

#185

Post by Grombobulous »

jonas21 wrote: post #167
Grombobulous wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that you linked a paper to support your opinion on this matter, though I read the summary PDF a whole lot differently than you did. I’m not sure I’d blame renewables anywhere near as much as you did. For one thing, energy demand hasn’t been increasing at the consumer level per capita. So you either have a growing population or growing commercial usage (like with data centers) or both driving energy deman…

Have a look at slide 53 of the summary pdf. It's specifically about Virginia, and it says the same thing I wrote above (minus my personal opinion about 100% renewables being a good thing). Just to be clear, it doesn't say that VCEA is the only contributing factor to price increases: they attribute ~70% to VCEA, with higher natural gas prices accounting for the rest. There's a chart in the upper-right of the slide sho…

Great clarification, thank you. I definitely did not get 53 slides deep.

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

#186

Post by kbelder »

dylan604 wrote: post #122
conductr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sligh…

Potholes are much more than just an annoyance. They can damage your car. Not sure where you live that potholes are mere annoyances, but where I'm from they can be quite large. To the point calling them potholes is stretching the definition. My mom used to joke that she wanted to throw in some water and a loaf of bread into some of them in case someone fell in. They can pop a tire, bend/crack a rim, and they can defin…

https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2026/06/like-an-explosi...

$3.86 million claim from a pothole. I'm normally pretty skeptical of damage claims, but that is a pretty nasty pothole.

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

#187

Post by Legend2440 »

ineedasername wrote: post #166

>37 data centers and there are plans to build 17 more, including plans to convert hundreds of acres of _ Civil War battlefields _ into data centers. Those poor battlefields. How rarely it is that anyone thinks of their needs.

Yeah, it's kinda silly to block development on a patch of ground forever because someone fought over it two centuries ago.

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

#188

Post by infecto »

nonplus wrote: post #183
infecto wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has proven that those 37 customers are to blame compared to the poorly structured forward pricing system which is largely to blame for some of their recent pricing increases. Not sure where this grid can handle it narrative is coming from. Most of the woes in this article are cherry picked.

If you want to pretend the only source of information on this subject is the linked article I'm sure you can find many users here to debate within your arbitrary parameters. Same goes for proof, which I'm sure would exclude power flow models if they were available for said debate. Edit: We can agree the article is not comprehensive, and doesn't have data PJM and utilities have not published.

I’ve linked analyses explaining why PJM’s forward capacity market has been a major driver of recent retail rate increases, not just in this one county.

SemiAnalysis: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/are-ai-datacenters-inc...

LBNL: https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-...

If you disagree, point to the analysis or data. Suggesting I’m “pretending” doesn’t address the argument. The article cherry-picks one county while largely ignoring the broader PJM pricing mechanics affecting millions of customers. Do better. Between pricing mechanics, input cost inflation and yes increase in demand has impact but not like the article likes to weave it.

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

#189

Post by cduzz »

samothrace wrote: post #174
cduzz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "party line" is that the goal shouldn't be "1950s grid, but bigger and with more red meat!" Renewables actually cover a lot of the newer demand and can be put around where it doesn't require as much transmission capacity because the production is happening closer to the demand. And frankly, these jumbo sized data centers can just go figure out how to power themselves. If they want to put PV and wind and s…

What do you mean by "AI dioxin"? Google turns up nothing for data centers releasing dioxin.

[flagged]

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

#190

Post by dylan604 »

conductr wrote: post #184
dylan604 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potholes are much more than just an annoyance. They can damage your car. Not sure where you live that potholes are mere annoyances, but where I'm from they can be quite large. To the point calling them potholes is stretching the definition. My mom used to joke that she wanted to throw in some water and a loaf of bread into some of them in case someone fell in. They can pop a tire, bend/crack a rim, and they can defin…

Potholes aren’t really the core of the annoyance, just like the lights, it’s the control mechanisms around them. Potholes are going to occur yet there’s no proactive repair response. Massive potholes you’re describing rarely show up over night, and it’s very likely many city employees drive over them daily (trash trucks, police, code compliance, water services, etc).

Oh, see, you must be a city slicker. I grew up in the country where city employees absolutely did not drive over the roads daily if weekly if monthly. In fact, I didn't even live in a city as the area was just unincorporated county land, so there were no city employees. Every now and then, sheriff deputies might roll through.

The country roads that met up to the "big" 2 lane FM where I grew up were all posted 20mph. I remember one evening when my mom got pulled over because the deputy said she was swerving so much that she had to have been drunk. My mom looked at him and politely told him "you swerved around the same potholes I did". My mom never drank.

Also, you really seem stuck on trying to tell me what is annoying or not to the point you are now annoying me

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