Interestingly, San Francisco has built no more of these AI datacenters and has seen a rate hike larger than that over the last few years. If we could at least get a few more datacenters that would be nice considering the rate hikes approved here.

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Quinner 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's because San Francisco subsidizes the rest of the state, PG&E is a state-wide utility. San Francisco is attempting to run its own utility, but is meeting resistance from PG&E and the parts of the state SF subsidizes.

	▲	larkost an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I live in the Bay Area, and I think this needs a little more exploration. You are correct both in that PG&E spreads the costs around the state, and that San Francisco (and a number of other Bay Area cities) is exploring creating it's own utility and removing itself from PG&E (like Palo Alto already has done). It is a near certainty that power rates would be cheaper for these cities if they removed themselves from the PG&E pool. Right now they look to be on the hook to help pay for all of the (long deferred) power line under-grounding that the recent state wildfires have proven is necessary. Much of that under-grounding is to get power into remote locations, and does nothing for most people (other than the implicit reduction of wildfires, which is a complicated subject). But there is a second side to that coin: without the big cities full of people (which are relatively cheap to service), all of the needed under grounding costs are going to fall to rural California areas, and they simply don't have the population or finances to pay for that. Personally I am in favor of some mixture. I would make the utilities all completely non-profit, with no investors to demand returns (the current system has perverse incentives). I would also start looking at some drastic limitations on where the public pays for power lines. Yes that would make some rural locations financial impossible to draw power to, but that would probably be a part of a real-plolitik re-evaluation of where people can afford to live. This is probably going to line up pretty closely with pushing people out of fire-prone places that should also be pretty much un-insurable anyways.
	▲	downrightmike 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		public infrastructure should be owned by the public

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culi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

First of all, the grid is interconnected. Some random city building an AI datacenter could absolutely trigger price increases in a different part of the state. Second of all, Novva Data Centers is in fact building a $500m campus. In addition to all that is that the war against Iran is causing electricity prices to spike basically everywhere. PG&E is also currently modernizing its grid and doing wildfire hardening across the state. The solar subsidies has also meant that grid subsidization costs have been shifted onto non-solar customers.

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cmiles8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well I think the problem there is called “welcome to California.”

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Tangurena2 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Enron managed to mangle/free-marketize California's electricity system. Utilities have to purchase electricity at market prices on an exchange that Enron built.

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malshe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I love California and occasionally think about moving there. But the cost of living considerations bring me back to reality. Despite all its problems, it's difficult to leave Texas due to the low cost of living (and HEB!)

	▲	freediddy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I pay over $0.51/kWh in electricity thanks to PG&E.

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butterfi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I might argue that we already have data centers, we just call then Colo Facilities.

	▲	dylan604 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'd imagine your normal Colo facility uses a lot less power than an AI data center.

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eskatonic an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Hey, paying for blowing up towns is expensive! PG&E's gotta get the money from somewhere! /s