I see white roofs that can be dark themed to reduce the load on the grid.
Wasn't there a country with too much solar, causing electricity prices to fall too low?
Do they not have any space left for data-centres?
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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That’s probably true but you only get ⅓ of a day on average of power. Demands are still rising so the other ⅔ of the day prices are higher and likely still averages higher on average for an entire day even if ⅓ of it is so cheap.
You could store surplus energy with batteries, pumped storage hydro power stations, gravity batteries and so on to bridge the gap at night. It's just a matter of subsidies in the right direction and political will to get there. But currently in impending pre-war times it's more like in a diesel-punk dystopy.
My electric utility just arbitrarily added 170 (~50% of the total) bucks to my bill this month, despite me using 11% less electricity.
The whole point of being a utility is to allow the "efficiency" of a monopoly without the ability to gouge the customers. Frankly, I'm looking to see if there is a lawsuit against the utility at this point so I can join on to it.
Also looking into residential solar. Ideally I can just give my electric utility the finger and disconnect my service. Between them and gas, I'm paying about 400 bucks a month, which could get me a nice loan for a solar array, battery backup, and all electric appliances.
And, funny enough, you would be doing them, the world, the datacenters, and yourself some good.
Yeah the problem is going to be getting the loan, and I would need about 1900sqft for the solar array, which would take up most of my yard. I'd need to elevate it up near the roofline of the house, so the entire back yard would be one big partially shaded patio. Which sounds nice, but I don't think the city will let me build it.
And all we get in return are chat systems that make up bullshit facts. I mean, I don't disagree that they can actually do some useful stuff, too. But the proportion of the public that benefits from them in any meaningful way is tiny compared to the cost to the rest of us. I hope a tornado lands on Elon's gas-powered monstrosity in, where, Tennessee, I think? Destroy that shit, please.
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Tiered pricing would help.
It does
The more you use, the cheaper it is
I thought that was just a China thing and others learnt from them, not to make that mistake.
This is going to feel like the recycle scam isn't it. Corpos sucking down every last drop of energy while residential will be asked to turn up the thermostat in the summer and down in the winter so we "do our part".
literally passing the bucks to us: https://apnews.com/article/electricity-prices-data-centers-artificial-intelligence-fbf213a915fb574a4f3e5baaa7041c3a
Always has been
Residents in big cities have been experiencing it for decades at this point.
ConEd saying "We're preparing for the heat wave in your area this week. Please, limit your energy usage to prevent power outages."
Yeah, and times square is still lit up full brightness. The skyscraper offices aren't doing their part. Most of them, you can feel the cold on the street from their lobbies.
Charge higher rates for crypto and AI. No one should be hot or cold so some asshole can make more money.
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crypto scam, AI is the new crypto
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Don’t let the tech bros into your state.
I live in NJ, USA. I thought I had missed a payment when my last electric bill came. Nope, just a huge rate hike. about the same amount of electricity as the prior year, double the bill.
Were you recently told your bill is gonna go up again when they put in that massive data center in a year or so? We were told. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ no option to say "fuck you, make them pay their bills." Nope. PSE&g was like "brace for it bitch." And that was it.
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how can they get away with this? Are data centers not paying their bills?
The way utility rates are set allows them to spread costs onto residential ratepayers instead of bearing it directly.
What? That doesn’t make any sense.
It's essentially supply and demand. If the data center is willing to pay more, then everyone has to pay more. I hate it.
Places like data centers don't pay the same rate that individuals do though. They get an industrial rate.
Basically they cut them a break so they can fuck you. The supply is more More than enough and the only demand that increased was from corporate interests.
That is regional. In Europe commercial/industrial prices are usually higher, especially in times of crisis, because residential power has a price cap. Damn socialists and their regulations!!1!
I don't think this is true, although maybe in some places.
For example, the more gas a business uses in the Netherlands, the less they generally pay per unit. This is terrible for our carbon footprint, where we basically subsidize the worst emitters. 😟
Yes it is! And this article is written about States being in the United States and how its affecting that infrastructure.
Trust me, I know shit is better everywhere else. My comments are about the current state of USA electricity and how its being affected by the content in this article. Which takes place in the USA.
I'm sure in the land where they actually care about people its different.
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Bigger clients negotiate bulk discounts, basically. But the other factor at play here is supply and demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price for the supply. Household demand has remained more or less the same, but because data center demand has shot up, prices have too.
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Why isn't the roof of that facility covered with solar panels? It might not provide all the juice they need, but it will offset some. Future facilities like this should be forced to install some sort of energy mitigation strategy before getting approval.
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I think that sooner or later GPT 6 and higher models will become too expensive for most people, and they will moderate their ardor and start introducing restrictions on use without all this circus like, look, we have a perpetual motion machine...
But even weak models are enough to spy on you damn well.
All the models are already too expensive for most people. Most people don't pay to use them, billionaire investors do. When the AI bubble bursts our retirement funds will collapse and billionaires will simply move money somewhere else.
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I've been thinking this for some time. It just seems completely implausible that companies like OpenAI will continue letting the people of the world use their product for free, what with the ruthless material requirements involved in it's distribution and upkeep.
To me it seems clear that the right to intellectual property and the right to work or contribute meaningfully to a workplace (as if that were actually a right) are currently being blitzscaled. I.e. these guys are running their companies at a loss to allow their product to become a necessity. Once that's achieved you will no longer have the option not to use it and they will be able to charge whatever they like.
We really need to begin pressuring states and governance to protect us from the predatory business models of these venture capitalists.
Well we don't have much time, we either need to act now or we could end up in something like 1984 and Mad Max. Although I'm not entirely sure, I'm afraid that we will really end up in complete shit due to crop failure, hunger and, of course, death and poverty, so we may well live like in those works. There seems to be a theory that the world is not run by governments but by corporations and governments are like puppets for the rich.
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They increased their energy use to produce a provably inferior model. What the hell are they doing?
Raking in vc money?
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