I wouldn’t point to power companies as the sole culprits here. These data centers shouldn’t be getting approval in the first place based on their power and water demand, but they promise more money and jobs coming to the area and these dipshits keep believing them.
So long as fuel prices fluctuate, power prices will fluctuate. Some price variation is more for curbing costs than for padding profits. I’m not the guy running those numbers at my power plant, but I see power rates swing with demand and prices/MW. The past few days in VA were pretty demanding on us.
I think there’s plenty blame to be laid at the feet of data center owners and local permitting morons, for sure. That said, at the end of the day, National Grid NA has posted year on year record profits and continues to argue that price hikes are necessary due to short term fuel cost spikes. Meanwhile, regulators and legislators insist that we need to “negotiate” pricing when most of the infrastructure and labor for generation and transmission is subsidized by the state, is a critical infrastructure, and the operators are still fully capable of netting immense profit despite everything. It just doesn’t make sense. They are not going to go away because their profits are fewer billions this year than last year’s billions, and if they did, it would be more than fine for the state to step in and take over in providing critical infrastructure for the operation of society, even if it is a cost center, because it’s one of the key fucking reasons humans collect into cooperative society in the first place.
I wouldn’t point to power companies as the sole culprits here. These data centers shouldn’t be getting approval in the first place based on their power and water demand, but they promise more money and jobs coming to the area and these dipshits keep believing them.
So long as fuel prices fluctuate, power prices will fluctuate. Some price variation is more for curbing costs than for padding profits. I’m not the guy running those numbers at my power plant, but I see power rates swing with demand and prices/MW. The past few days in VA were pretty demanding on us.
I think there’s plenty blame to be laid at the feet of data center owners and local permitting morons, for sure. That said, at the end of the day, National Grid NA has posted year on year record profits and continues to argue that price hikes are necessary due to short term fuel cost spikes. Meanwhile, regulators and legislators insist that we need to “negotiate” pricing when most of the infrastructure and labor for generation and transmission is subsidized by the state, is a critical infrastructure, and the operators are still fully capable of netting immense profit despite everything. It just doesn’t make sense. They are not going to go away because their profits are fewer billions this year than last year’s billions, and if they did, it would be more than fine for the state to step in and take over in providing critical infrastructure for the operation of society, even if it is a cost center, because it’s one of the key fucking reasons humans collect into cooperative society in the first place.
100% reasonable and fair take. No notes lol.