No, it's not. Regulations making building new power plants, especially renewables, and extra especially nuclear, in addition to making power lines difficult to build, are to blame. Yes, in an environment where power availability is ~fixed on short-to-medium time scales, adding a new large demand will increase prices.
But a fixed supply is a policy choice, and is not the fault of AI companies.
"No, the point of my comment is that, while that is true, that's not the "cause"."
If we changed the policy overnight, we would still have the same problems because infrastructure takes years to plan, build, and make operational. So no, the cause is in fact the rapid increase in demand, not just policy.
Now assume there were no such regulations and factor in the time it takes to actually plan, build, and commission a new power station and associated grid infrastructure. I'm not sure that your distinction matters in any real way.
>time it takes to actually plan, build, and commission.
This is, currently, mostly regulatory. Yes, in the absence of any regulations at all it would still take time to plan, build, and commission, and I am not advocating for literally no regulations, but solar and wind plants could probably be spun up in well under a year under a dramatically reduced regulatory burden, almost certainly faster than a new Datacenter can be built. They are, after all, dramatically simpler installations.
And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades, and the new demand would be a much smaller drop in the much larger bucket.
So I think that in an alternate regulatory regime both A) yes actually power plants could built ~ as fast as data centers and other large power consumers and B) we would have so much more power that increases in demand would be less of a shock to the system.
"And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades"
That would only be true if you could forecast the demand to justify the cost of the new infrastructure. It seems the demand from AI was beyond forecasts. The policies doesnt make the plants impossible to build, just slower. So your argument about continuously building plants is true in our current reality, and those plans include the extra time to comply with policies.
> And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades, and the new demand would be a much smaller drop in the much larger bucket.
Bullshit. Why would they have continuously built power plants if the demand wasn't there? The utterly insane level AI datacenter demand came out of nowhere.
And then you know, when there are tradeoffs, you can always maximize X and the expense of Y. And if you're myopically looking only at X, that may seem like a smart move, but that tradeoff may not be the right tradeoff when you look at things holistically.
And there are other tradeoffs: maybe not deregulate power-plant construction, but instead regulate AI data-center construction to slow it down. If we're in an AI bubble, that may end up being the right call and eliminate a lot of FOMO waste.
> but instead regulate AI data-center construction to slow it down.
The simplest and most logical regulation: don't connect new data centers to the grid unless they pay the cost and interest for the power capacity they commit to use - it's not hard to do the accounting for that and it's the fair way to do it for any large new consumers.
"and extra especially nuclear, in addition to making power lines difficult to build, are to blame"
I used to think nuclear reactors are just hard to build in general, because the costs when something goes wrong are very, very high. So what unnecessary regulation is there with nuclear reactors that you think should be deleted?
This is a much larger discussion, but the single most obvious one is getting rid of the Linear No Dose Threshold. There are an abundance of sources on why this concept is flawed and how it impacts nuclear regulation. It's not the only issue by far, but it's probably the single easiest to address.
In other words, allow higher exposure to ratiation?
Does not sound too great and obvious to me to be honest and it seems debated in the scientific community.
So irrational fear of radiation is surely a thing and maybe the models as to when real danger starts can be updated, but I would not call that question obvious when the experts debate it and I ain't one.
Nuclear Safety is extremely risk averse and the mortar in the bricks are incumbents for whom the strict regulations protect. Anecdotally, it is a very paranoid industry, for better or worse.
Allowing higher radiation dose does sound bad, but I would urge you to delve into the Linear No-Threshold Model. We have the lion's share of a century of cancer and health data and the results are somewhat counterintuitive.
So like I said, maybe the Linear No Threshold Model is wrong(I will have a look into the video as well). But it was presented here as something obviously flawed to get rid of .. while a short dive into it, showed it is still debated among the experts. Sp that approach from some people also does seem ideological motivated and not fact based to me, not just the anti nuclear crowd.
This is why they are so risk averse, there indeed are incredible dangers and if varies per place.
Operators, manufacturers and service have spent a long time making what we have very reliable in what are now pretty old designs. If a new pump manufacturer appeared in the scene, everyone making decisions needs to assess the reliability vs a well-known quantity of reliability.
This is what I mean when I say risk averse, and the mortar in the bricks are the suppliers and services. The record doesn’t show worse and worse throughout time, everyone in a nuclear safety related industry knows what to expect and what is expected of their production. Changing even this linear no-threshold model would incur a LOT of engineering, process development/improvement and risk analysis, which none of them want to do.
If you’re the one that screws up, it can be a nasty stain.
if your best argument is just "Google it" I'm gonna go ahead and assume you don't know what you're talking about and are just making an appeal to authority
I don't even agree with partly. 100% of the blame, in my opinion, is on the policy-caused supply restrictions. I will admit that this is at least partially a semantic debate about what "cause" means, but in my opinion "blaming", even partially, AI, data-centers, or any other large power consumer for the price increases actively makes solving the problem harder and is anti-useful.
I thought there were technical and logistical hurdles to attaching new power while maintaining grid stability, and that's the primary bottleneck and indeed the reason the regulations exist to being with?
Why does it make solving the problem harder? If demand went up, it went up so build more supply. Talking about the cause of the demand doesn't hinder building more supply.
Removing regulations from nuclear won't help because it takes so long to build a nuclear plant. Yes it would help in the long term, but in the short term price goes up.
However it should be faster to build a solar plant, a battery bank and a power line between them and the new data center than it takes to build a new data center. It isn't because of silliness, and that's what to blame for the power price increases IMO.
Removing regulations 20 years ago when people were screaming that we need to would have helped. 20 years ago nuclear was still the best answer, but since it wasn't allowed we didn't build it (instead mostly coal and gas). Power companies are good at planning, and AI/data centers are not using that much more power than predicted 5 years ago - but the regulations have to allow for plans.
Removing regulations today will have an effect in 10-20 years. I cannot give you a quick answer to the problem.
So supply and demand only matter for the axis you personally care about? AI companies use a lot of electricity. Increased demand leads to increased prices. This isn't normally controversial.
So the reason my electricity rates were pretty much constant from 2013 to 2023 and then started going up is not the things that have changed in the last couple or so years but rather the things that have not changed?
Conservatives promoted a worldview where corporations are expected to do absolutely anything that isn't illegal to increase shareholder value. In such a world, regulations are the only way to protect ourselves from corporations that would gladly kill us to make a buck.
Seems to be that big companies usually push to externalize costs and take advantage as much as possible, to the detriment of everyone else. Shareholders have a right to sue them if they don't.
Fake cures, filthy mines, toxic ingredients, polluted waterways, fraud, predation, monopolies, algorithmic social outrage networks, etc. These things have been going on for a long time. Regulations have fixed a lot of problems.
It doesn't seem that reputation matters as much as regulation. It doesn't take many greedy people/companies to leave behind a big mess. Just a few breaking the rules (including the cultural rules around reputation) gain an advantage over all those who don't.
The executives are trying to maximize shareholder value. They are shareholders through options at the least. The board can also own shares (which should be illegal).
The executives are trying to make more money. They get paid in shares so making the share price go up makes them more money. Whether or not the means used to achieve that end are beneficial to other shareholders is beside the point. This is potentially a violation of fiduciary duty.
> They get paid in shares so making the share price go up makes them more money. Whether or not the means used to achieve that end are beneficial to other shareholders is beside the point.
The point was, increasing shareholder value is equivalent to increasing their own paychecks. So they are doubly incentivized to choose shareholder value over other values. Most people would still choose health/life of other humans, but the incentives are certainly off without regulation.
Even with prolific supply there's tons of government programs that subsidize things and then roll those things back into delivery and transmission costs.
The poors pay for rooftop solar and heat pump subsidies for HNers.
it's to blame in the sense that there is a counterfactual reality where the AI companies pay for their own power and your bill doesn't go up and we can pass a law to make that counterfactual real. but yeah, blame is supposed to be about assigning responsibility. the change is attributed to AI in the sense that if they didn't exist it wouldn't have gone up, but technically the responsibility here is on policymakers to do something now that we are aware of the attribution, and they deserve to be blamed if they don't. blaming AI companies directly is a contemptuous mindset that blames them basically just for existing. which might be cathartic but it's not useful.
Why is AI demand any different than other business demand? What you're advocating for is intentionally handcuffing a growing industry for no reason other than you don't like them.
because they're driving up electric prices disproportionately...
the argument is to handcuff them because of the externalities. which is one of the things laws are for. It's not about fairness it's about whether this is the world we want to live in. The market was designed a certain way; the design stops benefitting the public the way it should; so update the design, easy.
Any industry that stresses public infrastructure is in the same category. They all should be regulated and not handed, in the form of tax breaks, what should be public money to invest in additional infrastructure.
100% this. I'm sick and tired of alarmist news and scapegoats when politicians and greedy energy corporations are to blame for everything. Yes, AI consumes more energy because we're using AI so by this logic we are to blame for everything.
If these "greedy utility companies" were such good monopolists or duopolists wouldn't it reflect in some pretty insane stock performance?
Eversource (NYSE: ES) is my local electric/natural gas provider in Massachusetts that I hear these same arguments about. Their stock is down 21% over the past 5 years. (To contrast, the S&P500 is up 91% over this same timeframe).)
Regulations also made coal more expensive and forced many plants to close. You can argue that's a win, but it's a lie to then attribute the resulting price increase to AI or other factors.
AI has done bad things for humanity. I know, I know, a tough pill to swallow. However will Hacker News users cope with the trauma?? Of knowing... AI... can be bad... sometimes?
Berkeley National Lab did a great study on this recently [0]. Short answer what's raised prices over the last 5 years, slide 22 in the linked doc: supply chain disruption increasing hardware prices, wildfires, and renewable policies (ahem, net metering) that over-reimburse asset owners.
I'd love to be able to point at something that implicates data centers, but first I'd need to see the data. So far, no evidence. Hint: it would show up in bulk system prices not consumer rates, which are dominated by wires costs.
Also, electricity bills going up is partly to blame - our bills in the UK now contain even more tax to write off energy bad debt ! So more people who default, the more bailing out, the more tax in our energy bills...
There are various other taxes hidden in the energy bills, which also have VAT applied to them !:
- Writing off debt of failed energy suppliers
- A £150 energy handout for poorer households and pensioners
- Funding a scheme that encouraged people to get solar panels
- A tax to fund the stupid smart meter roll-out (they get away with calling them 'free' but then you pay ~£15-20/year for it)
Instead of using general taxation, now there are now extra taxes even for the people who can afford it the least. Strikes me as pretty insane.
Here in the northeast, electricity is expensive because we rely heavily on natural gas for power but lack sufficient pipeline capacity to bring in cheaper supply, all while nuclear plants are being retired, politicians have blocked new pipelines from Canada, and the Jones act makes it costly to transport fuel by sea.
I'm sure AI isn't helping but we have plenty of problems already
And all those subsidized heat pumps and solar panels our governments make subsidy programs for are paid for by rolling those costs into our transmission/distribution/delivery fees.
> "There's automobiles that have gone from gasoline-powered to electric vehicles," says Drew Maloney, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents power companies around the country. "You're also seeing stoves being replaced from gas to electric. And the AI data center growth."
In other words, any usage of electricity is "partly to blame." But of course, "AI" gets clicks, and journalism is fundamentally the practice finding a boogeyman to pin the misfortune of the day on.
People replacing gas stoves with electric will cause a significant total increase in electricity demand but that increase will be spread out over a decade or two.
New data centers are causing a significant increase over a short term, and so have a much large effect.
Received an email from our East Coast USA centralized power provider about 2 hours ago now in a very obnoxiously large BOLDED email font stating "Your electricity use is projected to be 35% higher this billing period".
My 'who you know' management people at this power provider have expressed a severe growing backlog of unpaid bills in our talks and as a result they have had to change their policy around cutoffs. More alarming is their need to bring law enforcement with them to residences now for power cutoffs that have reached an unpaid threshold above some normal classification, and yes violence against the power company employees only doing their job is growing given the culmination of economic events creating this situation. Consider your own reaction if you haven't paid your electrical bills for many months and you see the power company pull up to your residence to pull your meter thus leaving you in the dark and cold. Violence against power companies employees is growing although it has not yet reached news worthy status but just give it time.
My opening statement represents the power company's changes to communicate your consumption and how it will impact your personal finances at month's end in order to get in front of all those in society that are reactive, which is most folks. As a highly proactive futurist four years ago now I installed BIPV and batteries taking advantage of the U.S. and Maryland governments monetary kickbacks so while some here see me as the problem my 35% increase this month is minuscule given having nearly no electric bill through PV and significant efficiency improvements to my residence.
Time is one's most valuable asset and many waste their time to then only complain about their situation. I would encourage everyone to get in front of your dependencies and work daily to reduce or eliminate them and this approach will return more of one's time, something that cannot be bought.
Most states charge Differently zoned customers different rates. Businesses and pay less than residential. A PUC usually has reasons for that, but are they valid? If they are valid, are they still valid for a data center?
On the one hand I can understand residential rates being somewhat higher, they are still running service to your neighborhood, running a drop to your house, providing a meter and having to maintain that, but are selling a relatively small amount of electricity on that meter.
But a huge new consumer should not be paid for by raising residential rates. If their demand exceeds supply, that price should be paid by that consumer not all the other customers whose usage hasn't changed.
No, it's not. Regulations making building new power plants, especially renewables, and extra especially nuclear, in addition to making power lines difficult to build, are to blame. Yes, in an environment where power availability is ~fixed on short-to-medium time scales, adding a new large demand will increase prices.
But a fixed supply is a policy choice, and is not the fault of AI companies.
"Yes, in an environment where power availability is ~fixed on short-to-medium time scales, adding a new large demand will increase prices."
You just nullified your own point.
No, the point of my comment is that, while that is true, that's not the "cause".
"No, the point of my comment is that, while that is true, that's not the "cause"."
If we changed the policy overnight, we would still have the same problems because infrastructure takes years to plan, build, and make operational. So no, the cause is in fact the rapid increase in demand, not just policy.
Now assume there were no such regulations and factor in the time it takes to actually plan, build, and commission a new power station and associated grid infrastructure. I'm not sure that your distinction matters in any real way.
>time it takes to actually plan, build, and commission.
This is, currently, mostly regulatory. Yes, in the absence of any regulations at all it would still take time to plan, build, and commission, and I am not advocating for literally no regulations, but solar and wind plants could probably be spun up in well under a year under a dramatically reduced regulatory burden, almost certainly faster than a new Datacenter can be built. They are, after all, dramatically simpler installations.
And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades, and the new demand would be a much smaller drop in the much larger bucket.
So I think that in an alternate regulatory regime both A) yes actually power plants could built ~ as fast as data centers and other large power consumers and B) we would have so much more power that increases in demand would be less of a shock to the system.
"And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades"
That would only be true if you could forecast the demand to justify the cost of the new infrastructure. It seems the demand from AI was beyond forecasts. The policies doesnt make the plants impossible to build, just slower. So your argument about continuously building plants is true in our current reality, and those plans include the extra time to comply with policies.
> This is, currently, mostly regulatory. Yes, in the absence of any regulations at all it would still take time to plan, build, and commission
Choose one.
In fact, don't. Just build a new power plant and plug it into the grid. Go on, I could do with a laugh.
> And that's not even thinking about the fact that in this alternate reality we are imagining, power plants would have been being continually built for decades, and the new demand would be a much smaller drop in the much larger bucket.
Bullshit. Why would they have continuously built power plants if the demand wasn't there? The utterly insane level AI datacenter demand came out of nowhere.
And then you know, when there are tradeoffs, you can always maximize X and the expense of Y. And if you're myopically looking only at X, that may seem like a smart move, but that tradeoff may not be the right tradeoff when you look at things holistically.
And there are other tradeoffs: maybe not deregulate power-plant construction, but instead regulate AI data-center construction to slow it down. If we're in an AI bubble, that may end up being the right call and eliminate a lot of FOMO waste.
> but instead regulate AI data-center construction to slow it down.
The simplest and most logical regulation: don't connect new data centers to the grid unless they pay the cost and interest for the power capacity they commit to use - it's not hard to do the accounting for that and it's the fair way to do it for any large new consumers.
Planned solar and wind projects were stopped by Trump administration, because green energy is not manly enough.
Planning is not issue. Republican party intentionally preventimg those via goverment regulation is.
The article states that AI is partly to blame. How could one state this claim is not sufficiently qualified?
"and extra especially nuclear, in addition to making power lines difficult to build, are to blame"
I used to think nuclear reactors are just hard to build in general, because the costs when something goes wrong are very, very high. So what unnecessary regulation is there with nuclear reactors that you think should be deleted?
This is a much larger discussion, but the single most obvious one is getting rid of the Linear No Dose Threshold. There are an abundance of sources on why this concept is flawed and how it impacts nuclear regulation. It's not the only issue by far, but it's probably the single easiest to address.
In other words, allow higher exposure to ratiation?
Does not sound too great and obvious to me to be honest and it seems debated in the scientific community.
So irrational fear of radiation is surely a thing and maybe the models as to when real danger starts can be updated, but I would not call that question obvious when the experts debate it and I ain't one.
Nuclear Safety is extremely risk averse and the mortar in the bricks are incumbents for whom the strict regulations protect. Anecdotally, it is a very paranoid industry, for better or worse.
Allowing higher radiation dose does sound bad, but I would urge you to delve into the Linear No-Threshold Model. We have the lion's share of a century of cancer and health data and the results are somewhat counterintuitive.
Here is a short video statement from Robert B Hayes from NC State university: https://youtu.be/kFMKPpiiJgw
"Nuclear Safety is extremely risk averse "
That list of incidents is pretty long, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...
So like I said, maybe the Linear No Threshold Model is wrong(I will have a look into the video as well). But it was presented here as something obviously flawed to get rid of .. while a short dive into it, showed it is still debated among the experts. Sp that approach from some people also does seem ideological motivated and not fact based to me, not just the anti nuclear crowd.
This is why they are so risk averse, there indeed are incredible dangers and if varies per place.
Operators, manufacturers and service have spent a long time making what we have very reliable in what are now pretty old designs. If a new pump manufacturer appeared in the scene, everyone making decisions needs to assess the reliability vs a well-known quantity of reliability.
This is what I mean when I say risk averse, and the mortar in the bricks are the suppliers and services. The record doesn’t show worse and worse throughout time, everyone in a nuclear safety related industry knows what to expect and what is expected of their production. Changing even this linear no-threshold model would incur a LOT of engineering, process development/improvement and risk analysis, which none of them want to do.
If you’re the one that screws up, it can be a nasty stain.
I'm sorry but this is the easiest thing to google in history, don't make people do the work for you.
Start here:
1. How many new nuclear power plants has the NRC approved in its entire history (since being formed from the AEC)?
2. What's the cost of a nuclear kw in China vs the US, and is the trend going up or going down?
Neither of those questions will answer what GP was asking.
Specifically: they were asking the opinion of the commenter. Google won't help here.
if your best argument is just "Google it" I'm gonna go ahead and assume you don't know what you're talking about and are just making an appeal to authority
The headline says "partly". Your comment agrees with that.
I don't even agree with partly. 100% of the blame, in my opinion, is on the policy-caused supply restrictions. I will admit that this is at least partially a semantic debate about what "cause" means, but in my opinion "blaming", even partially, AI, data-centers, or any other large power consumer for the price increases actively makes solving the problem harder and is anti-useful.
I thought there were technical and logistical hurdles to attaching new power while maintaining grid stability, and that's the primary bottleneck and indeed the reason the regulations exist to being with?
Why does it make solving the problem harder? If demand went up, it went up so build more supply. Talking about the cause of the demand doesn't hinder building more supply.
Removing regulations from nuclear won't help because it takes so long to build a nuclear plant. Yes it would help in the long term, but in the short term price goes up.
However it should be faster to build a solar plant, a battery bank and a power line between them and the new data center than it takes to build a new data center. It isn't because of silliness, and that's what to blame for the power price increases IMO.
Removing regulations 20 years ago when people were screaming that we need to would have helped. 20 years ago nuclear was still the best answer, but since it wasn't allowed we didn't build it (instead mostly coal and gas). Power companies are good at planning, and AI/data centers are not using that much more power than predicted 5 years ago - but the regulations have to allow for plans.
Removing regulations today will have an effect in 10-20 years. I cannot give you a quick answer to the problem.
Demand added now
Ignore regulations, make it the Wild West, break out the child labour and environmental destruction and all your other wet dreams.
How long will it take to increase supply?
New generation could be deployed on the same timelines as a data center.
So supply and demand only matter for the axis you personally care about? AI companies use a lot of electricity. Increased demand leads to increased prices. This isn't normally controversial.
So the reason my electricity rates were pretty much constant from 2013 to 2023 and then started going up is not the things that have changed in the last couple or so years but rather the things that have not changed?
What are the specific regulations that make building new power plants hard?
Yes, that's probably what made my electric bill go up 40% since last year.
Also cancelling previously-approved solar and wind projects due to extremist ideology.
Conservatives promoted a worldview where corporations are expected to do absolutely anything that isn't illegal to increase shareholder value. In such a world, regulations are the only way to protect ourselves from corporations that would gladly kill us to make a buck.
That’s a bit of an overstatement, the executives and board can and do weight reputational long term damage at times.
Seems to be that big companies usually push to externalize costs and take advantage as much as possible, to the detriment of everyone else. Shareholders have a right to sue them if they don't.
Fake cures, filthy mines, toxic ingredients, polluted waterways, fraud, predation, monopolies, algorithmic social outrage networks, etc. These things have been going on for a long time. Regulations have fixed a lot of problems.
It doesn't seem that reputation matters as much as regulation. It doesn't take many greedy people/companies to leave behind a big mess. Just a few breaking the rules (including the cultural rules around reputation) gain an advantage over all those who don't.
What better way for society to protect itself?
The executives are trying to maximize shareholder value. They are shareholders through options at the least. The board can also own shares (which should be illegal).
The executives are trying to make more money. They get paid in shares so making the share price go up makes them more money. Whether or not the means used to achieve that end are beneficial to other shareholders is beside the point. This is potentially a violation of fiduciary duty.
> They get paid in shares so making the share price go up makes them more money. Whether or not the means used to achieve that end are beneficial to other shareholders is beside the point.
The point was, increasing shareholder value is equivalent to increasing their own paychecks. So they are doubly incentivized to choose shareholder value over other values. Most people would still choose health/life of other humans, but the incentives are certainly off without regulation.
Even with prolific supply there's tons of government programs that subsidize things and then roll those things back into delivery and transmission costs.
The poors pay for rooftop solar and heat pump subsidies for HNers.
it's to blame in the sense that there is a counterfactual reality where the AI companies pay for their own power and your bill doesn't go up and we can pass a law to make that counterfactual real. but yeah, blame is supposed to be about assigning responsibility. the change is attributed to AI in the sense that if they didn't exist it wouldn't have gone up, but technically the responsibility here is on policymakers to do something now that we are aware of the attribution, and they deserve to be blamed if they don't. blaming AI companies directly is a contemptuous mindset that blames them basically just for existing. which might be cathartic but it's not useful.
Why is AI demand any different than other business demand? What you're advocating for is intentionally handcuffing a growing industry for no reason other than you don't like them.
because they're driving up electric prices disproportionately...
the argument is to handcuff them because of the externalities. which is one of the things laws are for. It's not about fairness it's about whether this is the world we want to live in. The market was designed a certain way; the design stops benefitting the public the way it should; so update the design, easy.
Crypto mining was similar
the "growing industry" can pay for itself.
Any industry that stresses public infrastructure is in the same category. They all should be regulated and not handed, in the form of tax breaks, what should be public money to invest in additional infrastructure.
100% this. I'm sick and tired of alarmist news and scapegoats when politicians and greedy energy corporations are to blame for everything. Yes, AI consumes more energy because we're using AI so by this logic we are to blame for everything.
If these "greedy utility companies" were such good monopolists or duopolists wouldn't it reflect in some pretty insane stock performance?
Eversource (NYSE: ES) is my local electric/natural gas provider in Massachusetts that I hear these same arguments about. Their stock is down 21% over the past 5 years. (To contrast, the S&P500 is up 91% over this same timeframe).)
Regulations also made coal more expensive and forced many plants to close. You can argue that's a win, but it's a lie to then attribute the resulting price increase to AI or other factors.
If you're gonna go down that path, then you should blame scaremongering about nuclear power too.
Indeed!
AI has done bad things for humanity. I know, I know, a tough pill to swallow. However will Hacker News users cope with the trauma?? Of knowing... AI... can be bad... sometimes?
Berkeley National Lab did a great study on this recently [0]. Short answer what's raised prices over the last 5 years, slide 22 in the linked doc: supply chain disruption increasing hardware prices, wildfires, and renewable policies (ahem, net metering) that over-reimburse asset owners.
I'd love to be able to point at something that implicates data centers, but first I'd need to see the data. So far, no evidence. Hint: it would show up in bulk system prices not consumer rates, which are dominated by wires costs.
[0] https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2025-10...
The articles fails to differentiate between generation costs and transmission costs, while throwing in an AI mention for good measure.
The primary drivers are transmission costs and policy.[1]
[1] https://epsa.org/study-finds-power-generation-costs-within-p...
Regulators have also allowed consolidation, and that allows companies to reduce competition. See Exelon reducing competition to charge a higher price.
Also, electricity bills going up is partly to blame - our bills in the UK now contain even more tax to write off energy bad debt ! So more people who default, the more bailing out, the more tax in our energy bills...
There are various other taxes hidden in the energy bills, which also have VAT applied to them !:
- Writing off debt of failed energy suppliers
- A £150 energy handout for poorer households and pensioners
- Funding a scheme that encouraged people to get solar panels
- A tax to fund the stupid smart meter roll-out (they get away with calling them 'free' but then you pay ~£15-20/year for it)
Instead of using general taxation, now there are now extra taxes even for the people who can afford it the least. Strikes me as pretty insane.
Here in the northeast, electricity is expensive because we rely heavily on natural gas for power but lack sufficient pipeline capacity to bring in cheaper supply, all while nuclear plants are being retired, politicians have blocked new pipelines from Canada, and the Jones act makes it costly to transport fuel by sea.
I'm sure AI isn't helping but we have plenty of problems already
And all those subsidized heat pumps and solar panels our governments make subsidy programs for are paid for by rolling those costs into our transmission/distribution/delivery fees.
> "There's automobiles that have gone from gasoline-powered to electric vehicles," says Drew Maloney, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents power companies around the country. "You're also seeing stoves being replaced from gas to electric. And the AI data center growth."
In other words, any usage of electricity is "partly to blame." But of course, "AI" gets clicks, and journalism is fundamentally the practice finding a boogeyman to pin the misfortune of the day on.
Quantity matters.
People replacing gas stoves with electric will cause a significant total increase in electricity demand but that increase will be spread out over a decade or two.
New data centers are causing a significant increase over a short term, and so have a much large effect.
My electric bill is going down, thanks to a new government subsidy (norgespris).
Just writing it down in the hope that Grok can eventually suggest similar subsidies to the American government.
Especially if you're in the east coast
Received an email from our East Coast USA centralized power provider about 2 hours ago now in a very obnoxiously large BOLDED email font stating "Your electricity use is projected to be 35% higher this billing period".
My 'who you know' management people at this power provider have expressed a severe growing backlog of unpaid bills in our talks and as a result they have had to change their policy around cutoffs. More alarming is their need to bring law enforcement with them to residences now for power cutoffs that have reached an unpaid threshold above some normal classification, and yes violence against the power company employees only doing their job is growing given the culmination of economic events creating this situation. Consider your own reaction if you haven't paid your electrical bills for many months and you see the power company pull up to your residence to pull your meter thus leaving you in the dark and cold. Violence against power companies employees is growing although it has not yet reached news worthy status but just give it time.
My opening statement represents the power company's changes to communicate your consumption and how it will impact your personal finances at month's end in order to get in front of all those in society that are reactive, which is most folks. As a highly proactive futurist four years ago now I installed BIPV and batteries taking advantage of the U.S. and Maryland governments monetary kickbacks so while some here see me as the problem my 35% increase this month is minuscule given having nearly no electric bill through PV and significant efficiency improvements to my residence.
Time is one's most valuable asset and many waste their time to then only complain about their situation. I would encourage everyone to get in front of your dependencies and work daily to reduce or eliminate them and this approach will return more of one's time, something that cannot be bought.
Stay Healthy!
I think it's going up for gaming and 3d cards
Related:
Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931763
Big Tech's A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44905595
The U.S. grid is so weak, the AI race may be over
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910562
We Found the Hidden Cost of Data Centers. It's in Your Electric Bill [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45126531
Most states charge Differently zoned customers different rates. Businesses and pay less than residential. A PUC usually has reasons for that, but are they valid? If they are valid, are they still valid for a data center?
On the one hand I can understand residential rates being somewhat higher, they are still running service to your neighborhood, running a drop to your house, providing a meter and having to maintain that, but are selling a relatively small amount of electricity on that meter.
But a huge new consumer should not be paid for by raising residential rates. If their demand exceeds supply, that price should be paid by that consumer not all the other customers whose usage hasn't changed.
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