194
Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay?
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
194 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
77925 readers
2629 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The data center provider. Why is this even a question?
So our utility came out and said they have to raise residential rates by a rather large amount, largely because so many data centers are demanding so much power they need to upgrade, so residential rates have to fund that..
Why raise residential tares and not commercial / industrial rates?
Oh, because businesses are subsidizes through taxes. Of course.
If you read the article, it's because power companies are monopolies and so we've regulated them rather harshly. They are often compelled to build infrastructure to meet demand, for example. We don't make the provider of a steel mill, housing builder, etc pay (generally).
And that's weird, right? It's one area of the market where we do a planned economy, and all states manage it differently. Now it's being stress tested in a new way.