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US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

theguardian.com

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Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#51

Post by ipaddr »

simianwords wrote: post #50
dsl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all seems like a backdoor to let tech companies build power generation on site without all the red tape and sell the excess power to consumers. This indirectly allows them to offload some of the fixed operational costs onto consumers. We just approved the first nuclear plant in 20 years to a company owned by Bill Gates and in a state that has basically nothing but farmland and a Microsoft datacenter. This absolute…

What’s wrong with this?

Price of power goes up and the local people are not connected to the benefits. You might think they will receive a lot of money in taxes but you would be wrong because they have tax breaks.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#52

Post by sparky_z »

ipaddr wrote: post #51
simianwords wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with this?

Price of power goes up and the local people are not connected to the benefits. You might think they will receive a lot of money in taxes but you would be wrong because they have tax breaks.

Why would adding a new supplier to the market cause the price of power to go up?

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#54

Post by burnt-resistor »

fulafel wrote: post #12

Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)? Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.

Sound and particulate pollution too.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#55

Post by simianwords »

otterley wrote: post #49

I find the whole thing a little odd. They’re basically pledging to pay their electricity bills. So what? So does every business. Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generati…

They are pledging to not only pay for their own bills but rather increase the supply of electricity itself. This will reduce retail electricity prices.

This mean retail consumers are paying less for electricity than what they would have paid if not for the pledge.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#56

Post by ZeroGravitas »

otterley wrote: post #49

I find the whole thing a little odd. They’re basically pledging to pay their electricity bills. So what? So does every business. Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generati…

An actual problem was them trying to avoid paying.

They'd ask the utilities to make Gigawatts of energy available over the next two decades and the utilities would say "No problem, just sign here and agree to pay for us building out the grid to support that".

Then the AI companies said "No we only want to pay for energy if we actually use it, if we go bust or decide not to use the energy in a couple of years we want you to charge all the others consumers to recoup that cost".

No idea if that's addressed here. I'm assuming not.

It was never clear if that reflected uncertainty about future demand or of they just like shifting costs and risk onto other people whenever possible.

edit: the pledge references this problem, whether it actually solves it I don't know.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#57

Post by podgorniy »

simianwords wrote: post #55
otterley wrote: post #49

I find the whole thing a little odd. They’re basically pledging to pay their electricity bills. So what? So does every business. Saying they’re going to pay for generation and transmission adds little. That’s already baked into the charges! It’s like saying they’re going to finally pay for the farmers to grow the produce and the drivers to get the produce to market when they buy apples--as though spontaneous generati…

They are pledging to not only pay for their own bills but rather increase the supply of electricity itself. This will reduce retail electricity prices. This mean retail consumers are paying less for electricity than what they would have paid if not for the pledge.

What if they pay own bills (why is this even a subject of discussion?), increase supply (formally), but electricity prices still go up anyway? Just curios if scenario from my descrition even possible...

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#58

Post by simianwords »

podgorniy wrote: post #57
simianwords wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are pledging to not only pay for their own bills but rather increase the supply of electricity itself. This will reduce retail electricity prices. This mean retail consumers are paying less for electricity than what they would have paid if not for the pledge.

What if they pay own bills (why is this even a subject of discussion?), increase supply (formally), but electricity prices still go up anyway? Just curios if scenario from my descrition even possible...

that could happen because the demand could rise even more.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#59

Post by myrmidon »

sparky_z wrote: post #52
ipaddr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price of power goes up and the local people are not connected to the benefits. You might think they will receive a lot of money in taxes but you would be wrong because they have tax breaks.

Why would adding a new supplier to the market cause the price of power to go up?

Because on-site powerplants owned by datacenter operators are not "just another supplier".

The threat is: This "datacenter power" disincentives buildout of "free" powerplants (by eating up significant demand at very low margins thanks to basically vertical integration); this slows down buildout of "normal" infrastructure (possibly both grid connectivity and power), and the electrical energy market becomes worse for consumers than it is now.

I personally think all of this is very speculative for now, but allowing industry to rely on the grid (which they still would!) while almost exclusively "buying" their own power is a risky proposition from a consumer perspective.

Re: US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

#60

Post by erpellan »

adrianN wrote: post #47
fulafel wrote: post #12

Does it include externalities (co2 emissions)? Increasing natural gas generation is of course disastrous policy with a major death toll from the climate disaster, there needs to be a rampdown of fossils use and production.

The only realistic way to "bear the cost" of CO2 emissions is paying for getting atmospheric carbon back into the ground. Right now that seems difficult to do at scale. The best way I know is making charcoal and burying it. Offsetting 1kWh needs on the order of 200g of wood turned into charcoal and buried.

Making charcoal releases CO2 though? How does that help with carbon capture?
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