County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on electricity prices in the US [1] and found that most of the rate increase in Virginia was attributable to the VCEA, and that load growth had a mitigating effect on price increases.

If you look at the overall report (not just Virginia), the places where electricty costs are rising the fastest are generally not the same places where lots of new datacenters are being built. It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here.

[1] https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-...

The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.

If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.

I think the issues are exacerbated by the US going from "regular growth in electricity generation" for decades to "dead flat" for the last ~2 decades. I think we're finding generation isn't just a switch you turn on and reap the benefits of overnight if it's not what you were already planning on doing https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e...

Part of solving that may be in what the article touches on - how to get the generation built before the DC shows up rather than as a promise after.

You want to use a lot of electricity? Great! We sell electricity. We will need cash in advance to handle some upgrades, rather than passing those costs on to other rate payers.

The text of the article indicates that the county government sent this message to all government facilities, but I suppose that doesn't make for quite as sexy a headline and a public school is technically a government facility.

I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world for them to illuminate that we don't need to do this?

The ~spice~ inference must flow.

Some of the data centers now run disconnected on gas turbines 24/7, which is better for electricity prices but they can be big nuisance for people living nearby.

Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.

Maybe the county could just ask its employees to work from home so that its office electricity bill goes down to zero. A win-win solution!

Unplug the data centers instead.

Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.

"ai" bubble burst cannot come soon enough

but sure would be nice if it would cause an exponential acceleration of fusion development in the meanwhile

however that still has a law of theromodynamics problem of pumping heat into atmosphere

maybe exponential advancement of solar but they've already figured out that cannot improve more than another several percent, and manufacturing is already near peak efficiency

Virginia (Dominion) electric rates went up dramatically, and are now in the same rough price band as 29 other states, because they were well below average. Important context, in my humble opinion.

Do we scale back AI slop for a few days or pull power back from schools? Easy, kids can suffer, give them some ice water.

The AI bubble can’t pop soon enough.