[m-hodges]

> But what if the power company needs to upgrade the substation to handle the increased needs of the data center? Or secure additional sources of electricity? In these cases, the investments are part of the electricity grid that everyone uses. These costs will likely be shared among all customers.

Okay but this is a policy choice. It doesn’t have to be that way.

[SoftTalker]

Where I live, if a developer wants to build a subdivision, they pay for the water and sewer lines. They pay to connect those lines to the city infrastructure. If the city infrastructure needs to be upgraded to handle the new volumes, they pay for at least a proportionate share of that too. The ongoing maintenance becomes part of the city's budget eventually, but not the costs of the build out.

All those costs go into the price of the houses built there.

And this is also part of why building "affordable" houses rarely happens. All the infrastructure costs the same whether the houses cost $100K or $1 million.

[silisili]

That's smart. Do they do it with roads also? That's a big one near me - developers buying hundred acre farms on unpainted 2 lane country roads and jamming in 2000 houses. Then inevitably the road becomes unusable until the city or county gets around to addressing it.

Always wondered why the county didn't require the road work, or money for it, up front.

[bityard]

That's negligence on the part of the county/township. Around here, every new development is required to pay for the traffic and utilities improvements that will be required once the thing is built. (And all the engineering that goes into figuring out the impact in the first place.)

[mulmen]

In my hometown in Idaho in the 1990s and 2000s yes, this includes access roads and improvements to the surrounding area. A car dealership and Wal Mart both paid for road improvements and traffic lights as part of development.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

The developer gets to at least name the roads. I worked for a city, the developers would submit names and while the city had the final call 99% of the time they would just accept whatever the developer submitted. The only times that I saw it get denied were times where it would create confusion like a similarly named road already existed or it could be construed as something profane

[ip26]

The “affordable” housing thing seems like such a misdirection. I can’t help but daydream that some moneyed interest somewhere fans those flames, as it looks like a dead end that can absorb endless fervor.

You know what you do if you want an affordable car? You buy used. I think most people understand Ford is never going to build another a car that costs $10k brand new, and the last new car near that price barely sold because it was so stripped.

[Retric]

Houses don’t shrink as they age.

When everything is built huge you don’t end up with homes that are cheap to heat, cool, or maintain. That’s why building affordable houses is actually a real issue.

What’s really dumb is the average number of people living in a house has tanked over time but the median new home just keeps getting larger. In an efficient market you’d expect new homes to match what buyers want, but regulatory capture has severely distorted the market.

[paulryanrogers]

What makes me crazy is these big houses aren't even that nice. They don't have significantly more rooms. It's all just stretched out to maximize sq ft for minimal costs. Sometimes with so many cut corners they're unsafe.

So if you have a big family or multigenerational needs then often you have to do significant remodeling or sell anyway.

[gruez]

>The “affordable” housing thing seems like such a misdirection. I can’t help but daydream that some moneyed interest somewhere fans those flames, as it looks like a dead end that can absorb endless fervor.

Do you really need a conspiracy by "moneyed interest" when the general public is perfectly happy to support similarly bad policies like rent control?

[WarmWash]

It's almost like "affordable hosuing" are the vacancies that the people moving into shiny new homes leave behind.

[rapidaneurism]

If a gornment changed policy to make houses depreciate like cars, it would not be a government for long.

And the car analogy is n9t fitting, unless we talk about cars bundled with the parking spot. But then they would not depreciate that much, and the banger with a parking spot in Manhattan would cost more than the Ferrari that could only park in shitsville.

[km3r]

The property a home sits on and the property a car sits on would depreciate the same.

But in reality neither has to depreciate, just stop growing at these insane rates. Below the cost of inflation, until the average worker can afford a home again.

[anon7000]

It is similar in Seattle. Large residential developments have a wastewater surcharge for several years to help upgrade infrastructure. Which normally just gets added as a line item in the utilities bill they pass off to residents.

[rapidaneurism]

What a smart idea! As a home owner I approve of this way to keep supply out of the market (or at least make it expensive enough to prop my price up). Can we invent any more charges?

[daedrdev]

In the US this isn't even true. The costs of grid upgrades are paid new capacity up front, which actually means there is a queue for grid connections twice the US total production, with no costs to ongoing customers.

[mukbangpervert]

Your post is largely false, and quite confused.

Grid upgrade costs are frequently socialized onto existing customers, especially for larger upgrades. Your central premise that interconnect charges cover everything is false.

[lokar]

It varies by jurisdiction in the US.

[claw-el]

Yes, an alternative policy could be, the same unit price for electricity, and the additional cost is covered by increased usage (at the same unit price). The entity making the decision for the increased investment (the utilities company) will take the risk and rewards that comes with the investment.

But, if it turns out to be a reward, people will revolt that for-profit company is making excess profit from something as basic as utilities.

[pooploop64]

Still waiting for canadian cell phone bills to come down after all those "upgrades" that supposedly happened.

[FireBeyond]

Exactly. Over in Virginia 37 datacenters use close to 3GW of electricity. The power utilities and overarching transmitters are looking at projects to ship some of that electricity (which requires ~700kV transmission). Two projects in the works are at $18B between them.

$18B to provide redundancy and not have to require schools and local government to limit electricity use and provide a bit more slack in the powergrid is a burden that all the users get to share. Lucky them. Yes, all users benefit, but lucky break for those datacenters, getting all that redundancy for power, without a $500M/ea bill.

[jauntywundrkind]

That's great to hear that we have at least somewhat decent voltages. I thought America was still sort of piddling around with mostly 500kV and under power distribution.

It's not a huge power multiplier (P = VI, so linear), but in principle I do love the idea that if you are going to have these massive transmissions lines we ought use the conductor well, at good high voltages.

China has been doing 1MV and 1.1MV lines for a while now, which is so excellent to see. https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...

[russellthehippo]

Precisely this. Incredibly annoying headline

[strictnein]

It doesn't even match what's in the article.

> "concluded that expected power demand from data centers was _a_ primary reason for $23 billion in customer price increases "

Also, it's weird that he describes PJM as "the organization that monitors the PJM market" when they describe themselves as "a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity" [0]. So are they monitors of the market or are they the market themselves?

I don't know... maybe I'm being picky, but the article just seems off. The whole bit about how data centers could maybe game the system by using less power during peak times also doesn't make sense - that's when they also have the highest demand. Pointing to cryptominers just makes me think he doesn't get what they do, which is basically arbitrage. Of course they stop when power costs go up, it eats up all of their profits and they can simply start back up when the costs go down.

[0] https://www.pjm.com/about-pjm

[TurdF3rguson]

Right, you can't point to a year where price increases didn't happen, so "a primary reason" becomes meaningless. It was going to happen for other reasons if it didn't happen for this one.

[butvacuum]

by my research, everything has scaled almost linearly with population. But- there was a huge, undeniable, dip in cost of a kw/h of power when lighting started focusing on CFLs and LEDs. Grid expansion stalled, and now people are upset since it started growing again

[phil21]

Doesn’t the rollout of more efficient lighting also coincide with the shale gas boom? This also happened at right around the time coal plants were starting to be retired for good as well, which short-circuited some expected generation cost increases.

You also had the de-industrialization of the US happening at the same time, which also took pressure off the transmission grid.

We basically had a few things offset population growth to allow us to use our grandparents electric grid investments for far beyond their expected lifetime. We’ve finally just caught up after a free ride over the past 4-5 decades.

I overall agree with you strongly, just surprised that more efficient lighting would have that much impact on grid demand.

[butvacuum]

I find it hilarious nobody ever mentions texas w/r/t this issue. They already required new Large Load Interconect Studies- and paying the cost of new grid infra. And, the hufe influx of study reqiests lead to new laws introducing batching.

I will note- the actual generation is left to market economics. I have much more faith in that working out equitably than regulating the grid. Even so, they've had significant consumer level grod connection fee increases- which I think reflects the end of various easy houshold effeciency gains (eg: incandecent -> CFL -> LED, P4 -> 14th gen, and HVAC. mainly lighting) and privatized profits more than anything.

[XorNot]

Except it's fundamentally not equitable: regular people can't easily relocate, and use electricity to heat and cool their homes, cook food, and have lighting.

A data center can easily outbid them on the electricity market and drive prices through the roof for a few years, but also is free to simply turn off if it doesn't like the rates.

[echelon]

Build more power!

[duped]

I'm really tired of reading comments like this"this is a policy choice" when these companies are straight up bribing politicians or exploiting their conflicts of interest to make this their policy. The public doesn't have a choice when all our leaders are bought and paid for by oligarchs and their businesses.

[abduhl]

Comments like this are even more tiring. Everyone knows that there are moneyed interests in politics. But decisions on these issues are made at a local level and so are the most addressable by local political actions.

[duped]

In my area there is quite a lot of mobilized anti-data center action that is completely ineffective. There is no legal way to remove corrupt local politicians from office that prevents the harm from being done.

And I mean this as in, local government ostensibly representing the community are also the land owners and contractors selling to developers, who can't be voted out of office until next year at the earliest and whose contracts and permits can't be revoked by a subsequent administration.

How exactly are you supposed to stop that?

[blackqueeriroh]

You’re not. You’re reaping the consequences of your previous decisions as a community.

[TurdF3rguson]

So what? You're saying local officials can't be corrupted by campaign donations? Because that's a hot take.

[abduhl]

I’m saying local officials are the ones where your vote counts the most.

[TurdF3rguson]

Sure but the corruption money offsets informed votes against with campaign spend. The economics of expecting to vote them out doesn't work.

Plus it feels like one party is getting flexible when it comes to corruption in their leaders. It's not as disqualifying as it was 15 years ago.