What’s wrong with this?

Price of power goes up and the local people are not connected to the benefits. You might think they will receive a lot of money in taxes but you would be wrong because they have tax breaks.

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sparky_z 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Why would adding a new supplier to the market cause the price of power to go up?

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myrmidon 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Because on-site powerplants owned by datacenter operators are not "just another supplier".

The threat is: This "datacenter power" disincentives buildout of "free" powerplants (by eating up significant demand at very low margins thanks to basically vertical integration); this slows down buildout of "normal" infrastructure (possibly both grid connectivity and power), and the electrical energy market becomes worse for consumers than it is now.

I personally think all of this is very speculative for now, but allowing industry to rely on the grid (which they still would!) while almost exclusively "buying" their own power is a risky proposition from a consumer perspective.

	▲	PunchyHamster 38 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm sure power plant building companies won't say no to more business
	▲	soulofmischief 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Not to mention the danger of energy production, even nuclear, becoming resource-constrained to the point where datacenter power plants leave no room for municipal plants. We're seeing it happen with consumer hardware; make no mistake on who will get preference.

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tomrod 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Grid overload if they produce too much base load.

Interconnection expenses.

Same issues as with mining and large industrial clients generally.

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simianwords 4 hours ago | parent [-]

so no companies should build anything even if they attempt to pay for the externalities. this is just nimbyism.

	▲	jfengel 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Attempt" is doing a lot of work there. Companies are driven by a profit motive, and are practically required to renege on promises that are not legally enforced. In a different world they would have earned trust and deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is not that world.