[typon]

Can someone explain to me why local governments are so against datacenters? It seems like a golden opportunity to build electric infrastructure that's paid for by corporations and if AI is a bubble at least that infrastructure will remain and continue to provide cheap power.

[Ekaros]

Existing power infra is likely fine enough for current demands. And building new infra doesn't necessarily mean it will be any cheaper to operate or use. So with datacentres providing rather little local economic activity after being build and potential impact on electricity costs say during night overall they are not that beneficial.

[pembrook]

It absolutely is not, power infrastructure throughout the US has been massively under-invested in for decades.

Nobody wants to admit this though because they hate AI and what it represents more than they want to rationally think about infrastructure.

[tekla]

Pretty sure its a populism/slopulism thing. I doubt anyone in govt ACTUALLY cares outside backlash thats prevalent in the media/socials so its easy to capitalize on the "we are doing something for the voters".

[iso1631]

If your town users a peak of say 100MW and is powered by two 50MW feeds

Then a new DC creates another 300MW of demand and builds 300MW more feeds

Then the DC goes bust, you're left with 350MW of potential supply and 50MW of demand

Compare with a highway, you had a 2 lane road, and it was fine, with 1000 cars an hour, then someone expanded it to 8 lanes and filled them with another 3000 cars an hour.

Then they vanished, and you're left with an 8 lane road for 1000 cars an hour, paying 4 times the maintenance for extra unneeded capacity.

[pembrook]

You're kidding yourself if you think people are laying down in front of bulldozers out of concern for trivial maintenance costs on under-utilized grid capacity.

[iso1631]

The assertion was this was a "golden opportunity"

In reality there's nothing to gain in theory, and in practice it correlates with higher energy costs

[pjc50]

> golden opportunity to build electric infrastructure that's paid for by corporations

The discussion here is precisely because it is not fully paid for by the corporation.

[t0mpr1c3]

Read the article maybe? Data center corporations are not the ones getting billed for grid upgrades.

[typon]

That part should be non negotiable - the tech companies should be funding the energy infrastructure. My bet is that they'd happily do it. They are starved for space and energy, not capital.

[pembrook]

Fear of change due to AI, masquerading as concern for the one thing about technological progress that a local city council has the power to obstruct: building physical buildings (classic NIMBY-ism).

Basically every AI company using "catastrophizing" and "ragebait" as their marketing strategy is working so well that normies are afraid they're going to lose their cushy do-nothing desk jobs. Hence the braindead/conspiracy narratives that data centers are going to drink all the fresh water, give your kids cancer, kill the plants and quadruple your electric bill.

What's most hilarious about this; dramatically expanding the power grid is absolutely necessary to get off of fossil fuels, yet the same people who used to scream about climate change are now trying to block grid upgrades paid for by data centers. With zero awareness of the irony.

This will only get worse as time goes on because first world countries are aging at increasing rates. Old people hate change. They're deficit spending their children's future labor while obstructing the creation of anything productive that might dig us out of the hole they put us in.