> Dress it up in whatever language you want but this is just populism, trying to punish whatever the media has made you angry at today.

No - it's a real problem:

> While hyperscale data centers can be built within 18 to 24 months, high-voltage transmission upgrades often require 7 to 10 years to plan, approve, and construct. As such, data centers are depleting available grid capacity faster than it can be physically replaced. As new generation sources can spend 4 to 5 years in interconnection queues before coming online, shrinking reserve margins (or the quantity of power that operators use to absorb system shocks and maintain reliability) cannot be replenished fast enough to meet demand. As reserve margins shrink, the grid becomes increasingly vulnerable to shortages and instability. [1]

Data centers place vastly different demands on a grid than residences, and it's a bit silly to suggest that they should be treated the same by utilities:

> For decades, the U.S. electricity system experienced gradual, diversified, and relatively predictable demand growth. This environment influenced how grid forecasting methods, reliability standards, and cost-allocation mechanisms were designed. However, data centers are now entering the electricity system faster and at a larger scale than planning, regulatory, and market-based institutions can manage.

To be clear I'm not saying that data centers must be off grid. Just that they should not be permitted to destabilize energy markets where they are built. To this end, Texas and Viginia are passing laws that require large-load customers to fund the increased generation and transmission costs:

> To manage price increases and allocative risk, Dominion proposed the GS-5 “High Load” tariff, which would apply to customers with at least 25 MW of demand. Under the tariff, large customers would pay a greater share of the generation, transmission, and distribution investments needed to serve large loads (such as data centers). Although large customers already pay for some on-site connection facilities, the proposed GS-5 tariff would go a step further. For example, if Dominion must build a dedicated substation or high-voltage line to serve a GS-5 campus, the infrastructure would be treated as customer-specific, and their costs recovered from the high-load customer instead of through general rates.

This is a reasonable approach to me. Although in some cases it might actually be quicker and cheaper for data centers to just handle their own power generation (as was the case with that data center in Ireland) separate from the grid.

[1] https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/data-centers-...

>Texas

Texas makes some sense because they are already disconnected. They cant reach interstate to make up supply.

But no, legally speaking, a business should be able to connect to a common utility. There's nothing impressive about one large scale business over another. If they want to tip in some cash or make some kind of deal fantastic. But mandatory? No sense making carve outs for datacenters.