It’s absolutely insane that middle class families are basically paying the electricity bills of billionaires
https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=rtb
Thats one of the ways they stay rich, by not paying.
Another fine example of big business socializing the costs of the business while privatizing the profit. True fairness would make them pay for the cost of adding the additional capacity that they require, rather than jacking up everyone’s rates to pay it for them.
privatizing the revenue*
Ope, caught me! Thanks for the correction!
make them pay for the cost of adding the additional capacity that they require
Isn’t this what they’re attempting to do, at least partially? Most of the big tech companies are funding development of nuclear power plants.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/google-to-fund-elementl-to-prepare-three-nuclear-power-sites
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/03/meta-signs-nuclear-power-deal-with-constellation-energy-.html
What I’m unsure about is if it’s just IOUs (Investor Owned Utilities) that are increasing electricity prices, or if municipal providers are doing it too. IOUs use every excuse to increase their prices, including in cases where their costs don’t increase that much.
That is what some of the tech companies are doing. For situations like the one in the article, that obviously isn’t the case, since rates are going up. If the tech companies are building and maintaining their own infrastructure for their outsized power needs, rates should either stay the same or fall (assuming that the tech company builds capacity to handle peak loads during LLM training and sells capacity during non peak loads). Rates going up in response to new data centers can only mean that the other grid users are subsidizing new capacity being added or buying energy from elsewhere at a higher rate.
More infuriating is media’s insistence to measure electrical energy cost changes in comparison to some average user instead of just giving the unit price change, useless!
Can anyone ELI5 why the cost gets passed on to people not even consuming the majority of the energy?
The supply side of power generation is coordinated by a bid system. So the cheapest sources are activated first. As demand goes up increasingly expensive forms of power generation are turned on.
For daily and seasonal variation, this is fine. The amount of time that really expensive generation is active is only a small portion and the base rate can stay low. However, if you add a bunch of baseload without adding equivalent generation, your utility will be stuck buying at the top end of the capacity market auction. The datacenter will have negotiated a discounted rate though because constant demand is good for the utility in the long run. That leaves everyone else paying a big rate increase.
Source: none given, but the capacity auction is a real thing, and the predicted behaviour of such a system can be reasoned.
A lot of the uptick is probably at least “blamed” on the need for infrastructure upgrades. These “benefit everyone” even though they are caused by basically one client, so the price increase to cover the upgrades is applied to everyone.
No, neither of you understand how this works or why a data center might cause local electricity bills to go up.
Your bill might go up because the electric company doesn’t give two shits who they sell their electricity to and companies like Google, Meta, etc. are all capable of far outspending actual families and peoples in these local markets. So, the peon’s prices go up.
It’s like, really simply supply/demand economics… it isn’t some grand conspiracy.
Idk why everyone has fucking surprise pikachu face at this sort of thing, big tech made out like a bandit with literally everyone’s money in the 2010s and has been sitting on it since. Everyone has memory like a goldfish though and doesn’t seem to understand exactly the scale of wealth these companies have. If they didn’t dump it all into LLMs and AI they would’ve found other vanity projects to fund.
The problem here isn’t the data centers or AI, it’s that we willingly handed over the keys to the city! Blaming morally neutral things like infrastructure is what they want you to do because then you won’t focus on doing actually effective activism and resistance to their stranglehold on the economy. 80% aren’t some clever sleuths who “really realize what’s going on,” you’re all being fooled and it is surprisingly easy to do. I’ve been on the other side before, I’ve seen it. They know what they’re doing. We collectively don’t. Simple as, to borrow from across the pond.
I’m open to alternative thoughts here but I legitimately feel your emotion may be clouding your writing, because I’m honestly trying, but while I think I get the direction you are trying to take the conversation it’s not entirely coherent to me. For as much as you wrote it feels like a few incomplete thoughts strung together.
we willingly handed over the keys to the city
I’ve been screaming that the power and water and cost issues are failures of our local governments. No, it’s not capitalism, socialists can be bought and paid for as well. No, the feds need do nothing, city and state governments should handle their unique issues. Yes, we need to vote out or city and county councilmen who allow this horseshit.
OK, I could easily argue for the state taxing the snot out of these data centers. Seems a no-brainer.
seems like this community really doesn’t like hearing the truth that changing these things are down to their action or inaction as individuals and a group. having a victim complex feels really popular nowadays.
wow, who could’ve predicted that sitting and consuming tiktok slop brainrot for 15 years rendered most people dumb as rocks??
I think in this particular situation, most people just don’t like your communication style.
neither of you understand how this works
Was it the “ELI5” part that gave it away, Einstein?
For the OC that’s fair - but I’m not replying to you directly, I’m replying to the person confidently responding to the ELI5 with conjecture that has no basis in reality. ELI5 doesn’t mean “take random stabs in the dark even if you know nothing about what you’re talking about.”
So why don’t these companies with nation state resources just build power?
Because they’d rather let us pay for it and pocket the difference
It’s that simple
Mandate that all data centers be self powered via renewable energy sources already!
Best I can do is a shitload of gas generators.
But if we Force Billionaires To Pay for Their Electricity that would be SOCIALISM!
-LITERALLY Republicans!
If it means we get many GW of Solar added so be it… but I bet the oil guys will say “just add more gas turbines” and give them a rebate on the generators
AI datacenters are the scapegoat to a bigger problem
Thank goodness I’m not ordinary!
