[georgemcbay]

> OK then I guess we should disconnect every large industrial electricity customer from the grid.

No, what we should do is put every "large load" electricity customer (including but not limited to these data centers) into their own rate-payer class like they did in Maryland and Oregon instead of lumping them in with everyone else.

Once they are in their own rate-payer class then their rates can be adjusted to pay for the costs of the increased infrastructure that is only needed because they exist (take away data center build-outs and electricity usage is largely flat or falling pretty much everywhere in the US).

I hope the data center developers are paying you to lobby for their ongoing corporate welfare? Because that's what you're basically doing here.

[nradov]

If they pay the same rates as everyone else then that's not corporate welfare. If the rates are artificially low thus causing shortages then we have a different problem.

[georgemcbay]

> If they pay the same rates as everyone else then that's not corporate welfare.

It is, because the electricity companies don't have magic electricity generating machines that can scale infinitely.

To satisfy the new demand which only exists because the data center was built, they spend a lot of money on new infrastructure. They then raise everyone's prices by an equal percentage to support this new infrastructure even though the infrastructure was not needed until the data center was built.

Not charging the data center developers for that extra build out and expecting everyone to absorb the costs for new infrastructure that never would have been built if the data center wasn't built is absolutely corporate welfare.