[nateglims]

Is it going to fall significantly for data centers? Industrial policy for consumer power is different from subsidizing it for data centers and if you own grid infrastructure why would you tank the price by putting up massive amounts of capital?

[xbmcuser]

It's the same about using the cloud or using your own infrastructure there will be a point where building your own solar and battery plant is cheaper than what they are charging they will need to follow the price decline if they want to keep the customers if not there will be mass scale grid defections.

[nateglims]

I don’t think this reflects the reality of the power industry. Data centers are the only significant growth in actual generated power in decades and hyperscalers are already looking at very bespoke solutions.

The heavy commodification of networking and compute brought about by the internet and cloud aligned with tech company interests in delivering services or content to consumers. There does not seem to be an emerging consensus that data center operators also need to provide consumer power.

[xbmcuser]

It was not the reality of the power industry but will be soon as we have not had a source of electricity that is the cheapest and is getting cheaper and easy to install this is something unique.

I don't see Google, Amazon, Microsoft or any company pay $10 for something if building it themselves will cost them $5. Either the price difference will reach a point where investing into power production themselves makes sense or the power companies decrease prices. Looking at how all 3 have already been investing in power production over the last decade themselves either to get better prices or for PR.

[lyu07282]

But didn't we liberalized energy markets for that reason, if anyone could undercut the market like that wouldn't that happen automatically and the prices go down anyway? /s