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by bogometer 37 days ago
Even in Texas' "disconnected" grid, we're seeing the same mess. Oncor is currently staring down a mind-boggling 350 GW in data center requests - to put that in perspective, that's more than triple ERCOT's entire peak demand. They’re now pivoting to a $47 billion infrastructure spree just to keep up, and they’ve already pushed through a $560 million rate hike to help foot the bill. It’s the same story as Maryland: no matter how the local market is structured, residential ratepayers are the ones getting squeezed to subsidize the massive high-voltage buildouts these AI projects require. One benefit: the increased human interaction pulls me away from the terminal. Door-to-door power salesmen now have a regular relationship with my Nest doorbell, warning me of the impending "AI-pocalypse" because ratepayers in Dallas are going to be the ones subsidizing the West Texas buildout.
3 comments

Why “even” in Texas? I would say “even outside of Texas” is more appropriate.
> Oncor is currently staring down a mind-boggling 350 GW in data center requests

They could go back to the future ~413 times with that kind of buildout

> Oncor is currently staring down a mind-boggling 350 GW in data center requests

This is an absolutely insane amount of energy, given that will have a very high capacity factor. The whole UK is one tenth of that, 35GW.