| ▲ | MostlyStable 2 days ago |
| Increased demand drives up prices under a fixed supply regime. Power is, in many places of the US, something approaching a fixed supply regime. This is not a physical requirement of the universe. It is a policy choice that we have made. I would argue that it is not the data centers driving up power prices, it is our policies around how difficult it is to provision new power (or build almost anything at all) in the US. Congress could fix this problem tomorrow. And in fact there is a bipartisan bill (BAAJA) that would go a long ways (although not all the way) towards fixing it. Now yes even if we fix these policies there would be a time lag on new generation being connected, but there is no reason to leave this problem in place. |
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| ▲ | porkshoe 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The main problem identified in this article is cost allocation, not rate of deployment. Data centers paid only 38% of the grid costs tied to their growth. Speeding up permitting would simply accelerate this subsidy to data centers, with households paying even more, sooner. Your claim that supply is effectively fixed also seems false. Transmission investment driven by new demand grew 17x in five years. The problem is that capex deployed to serve data centers is being paid for by households, not that it cannot be deployed. Real-world data also cuts against you. New York and New England are among the hardest places in the country to build energy infrastructure, yet the study found no clear price increase there from data centers. The bill you cited would fix much of this, but it would do so via provisions forcing data centers to pay for the costs they cause, instead of forcing households to subsidize them. If your point is “it’s policy,” fine. But the policy causing this is cost allocation, not permitting. Your comment doesn’t engage with the article’s central finding at all: who pays. |
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| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Data centers paid only 38% of the grid costs tied to their growth. Data centers pay for electricity under the tariffs utilities charge them. To the extent their demand increases wholesale electricity prices, it's the normal consequence of additional demand competing for constrained supply. In no other market is it standard for the person outbidding to also pay for continuing to provide the service to the person who was outbid. The only reason there is much incremental grid cost is because utilities are legally required to continue serving their residential customers. It seems extremely reasonable for residences to share in some of these costs when getting electricity at a significant discount from market price. The notion that 'households' are paying for data center electricity is just not what is happening. Maybe residences should get discounted electricity, but again this is a policy question and I'm not sure the best use of the marginal federal dollar. > Transmission investment driven by new demand grew 17x in five years. Investment is not transmission built, I don't see how this disproves the well-documented countrywide transmission delays. If anything, it is an indication that we are transmission bottlenecked. | | |
| ▲ | lesam 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Even if that supply is built, it will be more expensive because it is built at today's prices, not the prices of 20+ years ago when the community's previous generation capacity was built (possibly built with public money as a public utility). Should that additional cost of new generation be shared equally by the datacenter and the community? IMO it should be paid by the datacenter. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Even if that supply is built, it will be more expensive because it is built at today's prices, not the prices of 20+ years ago when the community's previous generation capacity was built Much of today's higher prices are attributable to the high cost of the permitting process. If you want the government to fix something, have them fix that. Moreover, renewable generation isn't actually more expensive. LCoE for solar and wind is now something like $0.06/kWh, which is better than fossil fuels. That doesn't count the storage you'd need to use them for 100% of the grid, but we're nowhere near using them for 100% of the grid so that isn't relevant yet, and using them for e.g. 50% of the grid doesn't really require storage. You can also get a large storage sink "for free" by electrifying transportation, because then you have millions of large batteries that you can charge when cheap generation is available and let them stay at 60% rather than 90% when it isn't. | | |
| ▲ | bradknowles 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I love renewable energy as much as anyone I know, but they have some major and well-known problems. One problem is that they only produce when the sun is shining, or the wind is blowing, etc…. These can be ameliorated with batteries, but that still takes a significant additional expense. The bigger problem is location. They’re only cost-effective if you put them in the right places, and that’s usually far away from where people want to use that power. Which means you need transmission lines. And those take as long or longer to permit and build as do nuclear or combined-cycle natural gas power plants. These things tend to be delivered in terms of 120 months, or more. Not 120 days, like the datacenter builders want. There are no quick and easy solutions here. Sure, you can truck in jet engines to use them as generators, but then you have to fuel them, you have to deal with the exhaust and added pollution, you have to deal with the noise, you have to deal with all the extra water you’re going to need to run them, you have to deal with added risk of toxic spills due to all the extra fuel you have to have on-site, you have to deal with added risk of fires because of that fuel, you have to deal with the increased heat island effects of running those engines, etc…. And datacenter builders want to externalize all their costs. This is the one single fundamental problem with them and all other big businesses. If we make the datacenter builders fully internalize all of their costs, then we won’t have these problems. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > One problem is that they only produce when the sun is shining, or the wind is blowing, etc. This is the irrelevant part when they're not the majority of the grid. We already have peaker plants to handle the differences in load throughout the day. They currently mostly run during the day and the early evening. You build a bunch of new solar and instead they'd mostly run at night, because the new solar takes the existing daytime demand plus the new daytime demand and the existing peaker plants take the new nighttime demand. > They’re only cost-effective if you put them in the right places, and that’s usually far away from where people want to use that power. This is not really true in the US. Solar doesn't work very well in Alaska because it's too far north, but it's fine basically anywhere south of the Canadian border, which is where essentially the entire US population actually lives. The average wind speed in every US state is enough to run a wind turbine. There are some locations that are better than others, but better enough to build a thousand mile transmission line? That's almost a coin flip even before you consider what a liability it is to centralize power into a big exposed long-distance transmission line instead of just distributing the generation everywhere. > Sure, you can truck in jet engines to use them as generators, but then you have to fuel them... As a temporary measure, that's the trade off against short-term higher electric bills. As a permanent measure they're rubbish, but they're not needed as a permanent measure anyway. And the faster you build something else, the sooner they go away. > And datacenter builders want to externalize all their costs. That's not what that means. You can't internalize demand for a commodity. All you can do is increase supply to meet the new demand. | | |
| ▲ | bradknowles 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Not true. We are already seeing duck curve problems where the price should go negative, unless the solar and wind farms are told to curtail. They need a buffer to be able to fully and properly contribute to the grid. Without a buffer, solar and wind farms are already causing some problems. They can’t really grow much beyond where they are today, without adding a buffer. Sad, but true. T. Boone Pickens is pushing wind as hard as he possibly can out in the Texas panhandle, and it’s getting harder and harder for him to do that, in part because much of that is done without a buffer. Granted, he’s also having to fight transmission line problems. For solar to be effective from the perspective of the grid, it needs to be installed in a place that gets enough average sunshine. And that latitude line is way lower than the border between Canada and the US. You also have to take weather and climate patterns into account, because if you’re below that line but you get too much average cloud cover, then you’re still not cost-effective enough. The only places where you can install solar panels without regards for those kinds of constraints, is where people don’t care how many panels they have to install, in order to get the amount of average power that they need. If you over-provision by enough, then you can install useful amounts of solar in otherwise considerably less than ideal sites. But then you’re also willing to pay a price and space premium that no grid operator would be willing to pay. Many homeowners might fit into this category. And many places where you would want to install solar panels close to the consumers so that you can avoid long transmission lines, that land just isn’t available. Or not available at a price that any grid operator would be willing to pay. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent [-] | | > We are already seeing duck curve problems where the price should go negative, unless the solar and wind farms are told to curtail. This happens with solar in the summer because it generates more in the summer, and then if you build enough for the other seasons you have "too much" on many days in the summer. But storage doesn't help much for that anyway because you'd need storage that lets you store power from July to use in January. And "too much" isn't a problem when it only happens a minority of the time. You'll have critics complaining if it happens at all, but that doesn't mean it's a real problem. The real problem is "not enough", which is the thing that doesn't get really bad until you're trying to run the majority of the grid on it. If it's only half then the other half is reliable power sources, some of those are still peaker plants and then you have the option to run them during the day on the days when it's cloudy, renewable generation is sometimes low but it's hardly ever actually zero, and by that point you're at something like 80% coverage on the lowest generation days and can get the remaining 20% through variable pricing. > For solar to be effective from the perspective of the grid, it needs to be installed in a place that gets enough average sunshine. A solar panel generates around two thirds as much in New York (on the border with Canada) as in Arizona (on the border with Mexico). That isn't totally negligible but it's not so large as to make it unworkable. > Many homeowners might fit into this category. Naturally, because it solves two problems at once. First, no land cost because you're using what would otherwise be an empty roof. Second, no transmission cost because the power is consumed where it's generated. This is an easy win for homeowners because even at the less advantageous latitudes, they'd be paying ~$0.10/kWh for their own solar while the New York power company is asking 28.6. And there are still plenty of not just homes but also commercial buildings that don't have solar on their roof. Give every Walmart and Home Depot an incentive to install a support scaffold full of panels over every parking lot. Why pay for a lot of land when we haven't even taken the easy wins yet? | | |
| ▲ | bradknowles a day ago | parent [-] | | > The real problem is "not enough", which is the thing that doesn't get really bad until you're trying to run the majority of the grid on it. If it's only half then the other half is reliable power sources, some of those are still peaker plants and then you have the option to run them during the day on the days when it's cloudy, renewable generation is sometimes low but it's hardly ever actually zero, and by that point you're at something like 80% coverage on the lowest generation days and can get the remaining 20% through variable pricing. You're not thinking like a grid operator. They need to pay to keep those peaker plants operational, even if they're not being used. The more peaker plants that have to be kept offline for more of the time, the less attractive it is to buy the power from the solar or wind plants. Until solar and wind can generate reliable amounts of power, day-in and day-out, 365 days out of the year, you will always need those peaker plants to take up the slack. But those renewable sources will never be able to do that. The best they can hope for is to overgenerate during the times that they are capable of doing so, and storing the excess somehow in another medium. That could be batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, or whatever. But they need that buffer if they are going to be a larger part of the grid. > A solar panel generates around two thirds as much in New York (on the border with Canada) as in Arizona (on the border with Mexico). That isn't totally negligible but it's not so large as to make it unworkable. It might not be enough to keep homeowners from installing solar panels in those kinds of environments, but it's definitely enough to keep large-scale power generation facilities from building there. > And there are still plenty of not just homes but also commercial buildings that don't have solar on their roof. Give every Walmart and Home Depot an incentive to install a support scaffold full of panels over every parking lot. Why pay for a lot of land when we haven't even taken the easy wins yet? I agree that parking lots and roofs of buildings are targets that look easy. But the incentives just aren't there. It's still just way too expensive, for not nearly enough ROI to make it happen. And I just don't see incentives of that scale coming, not even with the New Democrats. In theory, I don't disagree with you with regards to where we should be going and what we should be doing. But in practice, there is a huge difference between theory and practice. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent [-] | | > They need to pay to keep those peaker plants operational, even if they're not being used. But they are being used, every night. And then you can also use them during the day on the minority of days when it's cloudy. > It might not be enough to keep homeowners from installing solar panels in those kinds of environments, but it's definitely enough to keep large-scale power generation facilities from building there. Nope: https://cleanview.co/power-projects/operating/solar-farms/us You could easily confuse that with a population density map of the US. The main tell is that the dots are on the outskirts of the major cities rather than in them. > It's still just way too expensive, for not nearly enough ROI to make it happen. It kind of is happening. Nearly 100% of net new generation capacity in the US is renewables, with some new natural gas barely offsetting the gradual death of coal to net to zero. The problem is it's not happening fast enough. | | |
| ▲ | bradknowles 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | > But they are being used, every night. And then you can also use them during the day on the minority of days when it's cloudy. But they're not being used every night. Night load is mostly carried by combined-cycle, nuclear and wind. Peaker plants are expensive to operate compared to combined-cycle, so they will get turned off as soon as possible, so that the grid relies on less expensive sources for base load operations. Okay, so let's go to the interactive view of that map at https://cleanview.co/power-projects/operating/solar-farms/us It's basically just a whole bunch of single-colored dots on a map. That doesn't tell you when a given solar farm was installed, just by looking at it. And it doesn't tell you a whole lot about the capacity. If you zoom in, you can see that most of those dots are under 50MW in size. When I zoomed in and looked at a sample, most of them seemed to be single-digit MW ratings. What we really need to count is capacity, not number of dots. Unfortunately, this page doesn't actually give us a lot of detail. But let's look at the detail it does give us. First off, let's look at the ten most recent solar farm installations that they show and where they are: Five are in Texas, in the counties of Yoakum, Ector, Milam, Kaufman, and Upton. Two are in Illinois, in the counties of Pulaski and Jefferson. One is in Arizona. One is in Colorado. One is in Michigan. Of all of those, the ones in Colorado and Michigan are at about 40 degrees north latitude or higher, so that would qualify as "in the north". Pulaski and Jefferson counties in Illinois are below 40 degrees north latitude, so I count them "in the south". Okay, so now let's look at where the ten biggest solar farms are: Three are in Texas, in the counties of Jack, Swisher, and Webb. Two are in Arizona, in the counties of Maricopa, and La Paz. One is in Nevada. One is in California. One is in Illinois. One is in Ohio. And one is in Utah. Of those, the three in Illinois, Ohio, and Utah are all about 40 degrees north latitude, so they can be considered to be "in the north". So, while we don't have the full dataset available to us to show the actual distribution of when and where grid-scale solar farms are being installed, the tiny amount of data we do have from this website clearly shows that the majority of the new grid-scale solar farms that are installed or being installed are going into the South. Texas alone has 50% of the newest solar farm installations, according to that list. According to EIA, Texas alone has 40% of the planned new solar farm installations (see https://www.eia.gov/TODAYinENERGY/detail.php?id=67205), out of the 43.4GW of planned new solar farm capacity to be installed across the country. That would give us another ~17.36GW of solar to be added in Texas alone. There's also 24GW of battery capacity to be added this year, of which 53% is planned for Texas alone (12.9GW), and 80% of the total across just three states: Texas, California, and Arizona. Solar is happening, yes. But so are batteries. All of which is in line with what I said before. But all that said, we should be looking at total average amounts of sunshine, and not north versus south. Anything at or above about an average of five hours of sunshine per day is considered "sunny", and the order here is Arizona being the sunniest, followed by Utah, Colorado, and Texas. Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio are in the "low-sun" group. By that criteria, of the ten largest solar farms, only two of ten are in low-sun states: Illinois and Ohio. For share of total solar farm capacity of the top ten, that would be about 20% (1,170 of 5,786 MW). Of the ten most recent solar farms to be installed, only three of them are in low-sun states: Illinois twice and Michigan. For share of capacity of the ten newest solar farms, that would be about 27% (692 of 2,569 MW). So, we're basically back to where we were, but now on more solid footing. Instead of north/south, we're looking at expected average sunny hours per day (a much more reliable measure), and we're also now measuring the actual capacities of each group across the sets. If you want to run these counties through the NREL data (https://developer.nlr.gov/docs/solar/pvwatts/v8/), then you find they break out into three groups. The sites in Arizona are the best, with West Texas, California, and Nevada not far behind -- 95% or better, compared to the best. Central and East Texas, Colorado, and Utah come in behind that, from 80-90% of the best. The Midwest is 75% of the best or lower. For the ten largest sites, 51% of the capacity is installed in the top tier sites, 29% capacity in the second tier sites, and only 20% in the third tier sites. For the ten newest sites, 47% of the capacity is installed in the top tier sites, 26% capacity in the second tier sites, and only 27% in the third tier sites. So, we get back to my belief that capacity skews toward sunnier sites, for a reason. Yes, you can build in sites that are not as sunny, if you're willing to pay the price. But the incentives are strong. Now, getting back to the duck curve -- it is predictable enough that the grid operators can get nuclear and combined-cycle natural gas turbine powerplants started far enough in advance that they will be ready to take over when the solar farms are giving out. Depending on how good their prediction is, they might need to bring up a few peaker plants to cover the intermediate term, but then again maybe not. They don't run peaker plants unless they have to, because they are more expensive than combined-cycle plants, even though they're both turbine-based systems running on natural gas. The problem with combined-cycle plants is that they take two to three times longer to turn up compared to peaker plants, and longer to curtail, and that's why they need peaker plants to fill in gaps. For solar and wind plants to take a bigger percentage of the grid production, they need to operate more reliably, and more like base load plants. Which means that they need buffers. The advantage is that we may also be able to use them like peaker plants as well, if we're willing to pay to build bigger buffers than we would otherwise need. |
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| ▲ | phil21 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | How fine grained do you want this to be? The point of cost allocation is that grid upgrades and additional capacity overall benefit everyone - basically that electricity exists as a reliable and relatively cheap commodity to all comers. Especially industrial ones. It more or less enables the modern world. If you're the last house on your block to upgrade your home service to 200A in order to charge an EV, should you be cost allocated 100% of the distribution transformer upgrade that happened to be needed to service you? After all your neighbors were doing just fine until you wanted more capacity. How about the new subdivision of 200 homes that requires a regional transmission line upgrade? Does that developer (and thus new - typically younger - homeowners) need to pay for the entire upgrade or should that be split over all the ratepayers? Utilities don't tend to upgrade lines to meet exact current demand - that upgrade is going to be spec'ed to be good for decades of additional growth so the next subdivision next door is going to be effectively getting a free ride. I agree cost allocation needs to be fair. Part of that is the "last comer" is not the one to bear all the costs of needed upgrades. Otherwise things like rapid EV chargers in office parking lots would never get built. Cost of generation kind of takes care of itself in a sane market. That's just called a power bill. If it's being priced in a way where one user subsidizes another that simply needs to be fixed. Typically those "subsidies" are going in the other direction though as constant 24x7x365 usage is much cheaper to service than rare correlated demand spikes residential users give you. The transmission grid is a much harder thing to cost allocate fairly. | | |
| ▲ | lesam 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Except people are building datacenters that don't provide any marginal utility or jobs to locals, and asking small local communities to increase their collective power cost for no local benefit. It's unsurprising that those communities see and reject this as a bad deal, that's politics working as intended. |
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| ▲ | bradknowles 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Residential customers aren’t getting power below market prices. By definition, they are paying market prices for that power. It’s the market that is being distorted by all the additional datacenters coming online and wanting to suck down all the power that the entire rest of the country needs. That market distortion is what needs to be fixed. Datacenter builders need to cover ALL the costs of ALL of the additional infrastructure needed to support their operation, plus the standard daily OpEx once all the infrastructure is in place. And they need to comply with all national and international laws regarding their operation, including adherence to Dark Sky rules for lighting in-site, ensuring that they don’t cause any additional noise for any of the surrounding area, ensuring that they don’t cause any problems with water pollution, and so much more. | |
| ▲ | InsidiousWombat 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well, that is true, EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRY THAT USES POWER is paying for AI investments. So it's way worse, aside from populist "but think of the poor!" it is also actively hurting entire economy, driving prices up everywhere. | | |
| ▲ | phil21 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The lack of cheap reliable power is actively hurting the entire economy. This stems primarily from the fact the US coasted on the previous generation's (no pun intended) investments in the power grid. At some point you run out of your great grandparents investments into the future. Inertia doesn't last forever. |
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| ▲ | rconti 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Care to enlighten us as to what fraction of residential rates that data centers pay? Care to explain how that fraction counts as "outbidding"? | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The billed price per kWh includes the cost of both generation and distribution. Residential customers pay higher distribution costs per kWh because the same mile of residential power lines only carries kW of power instead of MW without correspondingly consuming thousands of times less land or requiring thousands of times less maintenance. Meanwhile the thing they're outbidding you on is generation. | | |
| ▲ | rconti 2 days ago | parent [-] | | So you’re confirming that, if distribution costs go up, consumers pay a greater share of that, IN ADDITION to the generation costs we’re bidding on in the market? Also I’m sharing 99.99% of the distribution costs with my neighbors. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent [-] | | > So you’re confirming that, if distribution costs go up, consumers pay a greater share of that Completely the opposite. Consumers are charged more for distribution because distribution to consumers costs more per kWh to build and maintain. Distribution to sites with large consumption has a much lower cost per kWh, which those sites are already paying, which is why they pay less per kWh even with that cost already included. > Also I’m sharing 99.99% of the distribution costs with my neighbors. Your neighbors who are also consuming an average of ~1kW, so the ~20 houses on your mile-long suburban street are consuming ~20kW in total. A 100MW+ site which is a mile from the substation or power plant has distribution costs that are thousands of times lower per kWh, will generally be located close to them for exactly that reason, and may also be sharing the same lines with other neighboring commercial/industrial sites. |
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| ▲ | pyrale 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The theory you can defend can be summarized by an apt name: locust capitalism. | | |
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| ▲ | consensus1 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In this case the other 62% is only $5.1 billion, which averages out to about $15 per person across the US. Since this is reflected in wholesale electricity prices I assume it is even enough that after accounting for unequal impact, it still isn't that high. It seems like a problem, but not a major one. | | |
| ▲ | paimapi 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That average is a false equivalency since the cost subsidy will be localized to the regional power provider typically the state-run monopoly or some other large provider. It's not an even distribution and the core thesis of the article, that the lower-income folks are the ones subsidizing it, likely still holds because land is historically cheaper and is generally less developed by municipal and state govts when its residents are lower-income and/or a minority population, and local distribution (and costs) impact those with less (usually no) disposable income by which they can improve their household energy efficiency. | | |
| ▲ | consensus1 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This makes no sense because the impact here is increased costs on the utilities which is then passed through as rate increases. Unless lower income people consume more electricity than rich people (doubt) then it doesn't impact them more. | | |
| ▲ | BobaFloutist 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They're saying it's not $15 from each of the $350m people in the US, it's a much larger number from each of the much smaller number of people unlucky enough to share a utility with one of these new data centers. | | |
| ▲ | consensus1 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | But it isn't. Utilities tend to cover very large areas of millions to 10s of millions of people. Also, since the cost is passed on in wholesale energy prices the impact is distributed by kWh consumed, which is mostly commercial users, not residential. |
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| ▲ | phs318u 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, since it’s “only” $5.1 billion, the trillion dollar valued companies should have no problem paying costs in full rather than seeking subsidies from the hapless taxpayers. |
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| ▲ | thelastgallon 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Data centers paid only 38% of the grid costs tied to their growth. Same as with roads. Roads are subsidized for corporations because damage is proportional to 4th power of weight (upto 9th power of weight on poor roads). Almost all corporations in US are 'successful' on the backs of being subsidized by consumers in many ways. | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Data centers paid only 38% of the grid costs tied to their growth. That's not what the article is describing. What's happening is that price is used suppress demand during the period between when demand increases and when supply responds. That isn't the cost of increasing supply, it's the cost of not having it already. Which is why you want to cause the period between the one and the other to be as short as possible. > Your claim that supply is effectively fixed also seems false. Transmission investment driven by new demand grew 17x in five years. The claim that supply is fixed is "false" in the sense that it isn't literally impossible to add new supply. It is, however, much more difficult than it could or should be, which makes the investment cost more and take longer than it otherwise would, and in the meantime people are paying higher prices. Moreover, "17x" doesn't really mean anything when the base rate started so close to zero. We've been deterring these investments for far too long. > Real-world data also cuts against you. New York and New England are among the hardest places in the country to build energy infrastructure, yet the study found no clear price increase there from data centers. New York and New England are among the hardest places in the country to build energy infrastructure which is why the price of electricity there is already high and then you don't get increased demand in the place with high prices since the high prices shift the demand to other locations. That's not a useful strategy if you want lower prices since the prices are only not going up there because they're already up there. > Your comment doesn’t engage with the article’s central finding at all: who pays. We need to distinguish two things here. The first is, who pays for the actual long-term costs of increasing generation. But that's easy, because that cost isn't actually that high. It's equivalent to the normal pre-existing price of electricity. It might even be less because e.g. solar has gotten pretty cheap and to the extent that you add that, the average generation cost would even go down. The second is, what happens during the period between when the new demand comes online and when the new generation comes online? But having new data centers "pay" that to keep the short-term price of electricity from going up is not possible, because having the short-term price go up is the thing that suppresses the short-term demand to keep it from exceeding supply. If the price didn't go up in the interim then the demand at the lower price would exceed available supply. Which brings us back to, what you need is to bring the new generation online as quickly as possible. |
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| ▲ | sarchertech 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is new data center project 30 miles outside my city that plans to build a 1000MW natural gas power plant and a 500MW biomass plant that will take millions of acres of forest to sustain (to quite the developer it will burn 350-500 truckloads of logs per day). If this is an example of the kind of buildout we want to streamline, I say no thanks. |
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| ▲ | celtain 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | One of the perverse things about our current permitting regime is that it's often easier for a company to build a private natural gas power plant connected to their data center than it is for the local utility to build a new wind or solar farm. The former can often be done without any kind of discretionary permit at all, whereas the latter goes through a public process in which residents can complain and sue to block the project. And both are much easier than getting permits for a high voltage transmission line to another region of the country where it might make more sense to build a wind or solar farm. | |
| ▲ | detourdog 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My town just found out about the forest service’s intent to do some major logging and the truck traffic is way out of spec to the existing roads to the trees. The scale the data centers want to operate at maybe way out of spec. to the existing infrastructure. https://www.iberkshires.com/story/84456/Town-Residents-Conce... | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent [-] | | so from the article, 200 truck trips over 5 years. we're honestly screwed as a country, funny to see. | | |
| ▲ | detourdog 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This an ancient road when it turns to dirt that’s VT. The Massachusetts is paved but as the town head of DPW is worried about the weight of the trucks. This road happens to not meet the town standards for construction of new development. The road might see 200 cars a day. The physics for a logging trucks are beyond the roads capabilities. They may come in spurts. There are no stop signs and none are needed. | | |
| ▲ | cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent [-] | | How manny times does the snow plow go down that road in the same 5yr period? What's the axle group loading for a snow plow? The same federal maximum as the log truck you say? The prevalence of dirt roads in VT is an intentional policy decision. | | |
| ▲ | detourdog 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The snow plow is seasonal traffic and not nearly as long or heavy as a million trees. The biggest connecting road has a commercial limit of 2.5 tons. The snow plow as two axles | | |
| ▲ | cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I have no sympathy for a bunch of retired New Yorkers who wouldn't pony up for some asphalt because it didn't fit the "rustic theme" they envisioned for their state. | | |
| ▲ | detourdog a day ago | parent [-] | | Not asking for sympathy asking for money for road usage. Didn't describe that population at all. EMT, Nurses, college professors, generational farmers, trades people. The main point is why should the town be burdened with the cost. The road satisfies the community needs. Vermont gave up on their side of the road when the commercial roads were developed 3/4 of mile over. The forest service should budget for the impact on the local roads. | | |
| ▲ | cucumber3732842 a day ago | parent [-] | | >Didn't describe that population at all. EMT, Nurses, college professors, generational farmers, trades people. Sure sounds like a service economy that feeds upon retirement and tourism money to me....(I know what they look like, I grew up in one) >The main point is why should the town be burdened with the cost. The road satisfies the community needs. Vermont gave up on their side of the road when the commercial roads were developed 3/4 of mile over. The forest service should budget for the impact on the local roads. I don't care exactly who winds up holding the bag but when you drive from literally anywhere bordering Vermont into Vermont it's pretty clear what the level of investment in transportation infrastructure is. And this infighting over how some petty amount of truck traffic is gonna destroy a dirt road is exactly what's downhill of that under-investment. | | |
| ▲ | detourdog 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sounds to me like you are blaming service workers for existing in an economy beyond their control, to justify some in anger. |
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| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Biomass is almost certainly a better form of energy production than whatever your existing energy mix is and it is being villanized, nice. | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The majority of our power comes from 2 nuclear plants nearby, 8 hydro dams, and renewables. We also have one of the largest pumped storage hydro facilities a few miles away. A biomass plant harvesting existing timber would only be better if the alternative were building a new coal plant. This isn’t replacing anything though. We don’t need an extra 1.5GW, so if this project doesn’t go through the alternative will be that we continue moving towards more solar and wind. | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Sounds like Tennessee Valley Authority, in which case 50% of your energy mix is fossil fuels and 0% of the biomass plant is fossil fuel and the incremental effect is potentially negative on atmospheric carbon. | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It’s 46% and it’s irrelevant if it’s not replacing any existing power generation. There is more excess data center power demand than there is capability to build plants over the next 10 years, so if this plant isn’t built the likely result is 1 less data center and not releasing carbon from 5.5 million tons of timber per year. |
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| ▲ | Micrococonut 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Better how? | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent [-] | | More sustainable/co2 neutral/renewable. | | |
| ▲ | Symbiote 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Farmed trees are often promoted as being a great fuel, but they do very, very little for enhancing biodiversity. The UK's largest CO₂ emitter is an ex-coal now-biomass powerplant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_Power_Station | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Farmed trees are often promoted as being a great fuel, but they do very, very little for enhancing biodiversity. Wind turbines and hydroelectric dams don't do much for enhancing biodiversity either, which is fine because their purpose is to generate electricity. > The UK's largest CO₂ emitter is an ex-coal now-biomass powerplant Only by counting burning biomass as emitting new CO2 while not counting the CO2 it removed from the air from being grown. | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That only counts if you grow the trees explicitly for power generation. Burning trees that already existed (as is the plan for the plant I mentioned) is like burning coal, which also removed CO2 from the air in the past. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Trees are part of the active carbon cycle. They grow while taking in CO2, then die and rot while releasing it again. Burning them does the same thing as the second one, which was going to happen on its own. Coal isn't part of the active carbon cycle. It would stay locked in the ground indefinitely if you didn't dig it up. Moreover, that plant appears to be getting biomass as compressed pellets from sawmill scrap wood and sawdust, i.e. it's the refuse from trees that were already being logged to make lumber. If they didn't burn it then it would go into a landfill to rot and release the carbon anyway. | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s not the plant I’m referring to plans to do. They’re planning to bring in 350-500 logging trucks per day. Sure they will get sawmill scraps if they can, but if built this will be by far the largest biomass reactor in the country. When I did the math there’s not enough available scrap in the entire country to power this thing. They’ve explicitly stated that they need 5.5 million tons of timber from the surround 250 miles of forest annually. >Burning them does the same thing as the second one, which was going to happen on its own. Over 50-100 years for short lived species. And much longer for longer lived species. So yes better than coal but over the lifetime of anyone alive today it’s essentially the same thing, so it’s only really better than coal if you are looking 100 years into the future and if you stop doing cutting down existing trees at some point. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > When I did the math there’s not enough available scrap in the entire country to power this thing. Which tracks since it's in England and they're getting pellets from the US, Canada and Europe. > Over 50-100 years for short lived species. And much longer for longer lived species. But who is logging old growth trees for biomass? In if someone is cutting down a tree in a first world country it's generally either because the tree was grown intending to cut it down and they immediately start growing new trees there, or because it's going to be cut down regardless of what you do with the tree because they're removing it in order to make some other use of the land. Moreover, you can always find that one asshat doing something ridiculous, but the world also generates a lot of scrap wood or cuts down a lot of trees just to clear the land. Burning them to generate electricity is never going to be large proportion of world power generation, but doing it to the extent that the trees were just going to rot anyway seems pretty hard to object to. | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The plant that I was talking about when starting this thread plans on harvesting 5.5 million tons of timber per year. That’s not all that much unused wood scrap, so if you’re building a large biomass plant you’re going to end up harvesting timber. > In if someone is cutting down a tree in a first world country it's generally either because the tree was grown intending to cut it down and they immediately start growing new trees there, or because it's going to be cut down regardless of what you do with the tree because they're removing it in order to make some other use of the land. In Europe maybe. In the US and Canada it’s very common to harvest timber from naturally grown forests (vs managed plantations) that are being cut primarily for the timber. |
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| ▲ | UncleOxidant 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Congress could fix this problem tomorrow. Even if congress "fixed" this problem tomorrow it would still take years to build the increased capacity (as you note). Since we do essentially have a fixed supply regime the fast buildout of data centers we've seen over the last few years has indeed been the cause of increased power prices. I'll also add that several renewable power generation projects had been in the works and this administration killed them (even paying a lot of money to kill them). |
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| ▲ | detourdog 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Congress can’t fix the problem tomorrow. The problem is tied to non-existent distribution infrastructure. |
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| ▲ | unethical_ban 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| NYT has an op-ed today encouraging BAAJA, but all the comments are ripping it for bias. Notably it seems to strip away protections for historic sites and takes away rights from Indian tribes. Imagine running HVDC lines through tribal lands, over the Grand Canyon or other historic landmarks - things that would be prevented today that would be legal tomorrow. I haven't read it, and I do support some level of expediency with grid buildout, but it sounds like it opens the door to ruining cultural landmarks, no prevention of abuse for fossil fuel purposes. Finally, and I mean this honestly: If the administration supports it, it probably is something worth pausing to consider. |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Imagine running HVDC lines through tribal lands, over the Grand Canyon or other historic landmarks - things that would be prevented today that would be legal tomorrow. There are plenty of other laws available to prevent various things from happening. The difference is that those need a government prosecutor to initiate a case rather than letting every member of the public file a nuisance lawsuit. Which they would do in your "someone trying to run HVDC through the Grand Canyon" scenario and any other sufficiently egregious case, but not do when someone is just trying to build a boring wind farm on some boring land they own. | |
| ▲ | consensus1 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is too much protection for historic sites (most of which have trivial historical value) and Indian tribes have way too much power to extort money out of infrastructure projects. | | |
| ▲ | 1659447091 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Indian tribes have way too much power to extort money out of infrastructure projects. They have too much power? On their land? Separately, Here is their objections for anyone interested https://narf.org/baaja-reform-bill/ | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > They have too much power? On their land? It's not their sovereign land, except in the sense that the entirety of the US is 'their land.' Tribes are sovereign over their own land and BAJAA does not change that. It is common for tribes to litigate things outside of their own lands and administered by/for the public, for instance this landmark case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Nation_v._United_States... | | |
| ▲ | defrost 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Their lawyers took the religious objection path perhaps because that might carry greater weight than an environmental protection argument- but at its root this has the look of a watershed issue. Would you personally be A-OK with tonnes of treated sewerage being dumped upshed from your drinking water extraction point? Responsible elders / leaders are expected to to do their best to slow roll or stop such changes being made - once it becomes routine its much harder to stop as problems present. | |
| ▲ | 1659447091 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They used Religious Freedom Restoration Act in that case, and didn't even win. Some cases that have won use RFRA to legally discriminate against minorities by Evangelical Christians. Native Americans bring lawsuits based on their religion over a sacred site and reclaimed water, just like anyone else can, and yet losing "this landmark case" somehow proves they have too much power? | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I didn’t say they have too much power, I said that the land at question is not tribal land, it is federal lands. | | |
| ▲ | 1659447091 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They bring Religion Freedom lawsuits over sacred sites involving federal land (which the RFRA is a federal law) and keep losing. What is the problem here? That they exercise the same right all Americans have to use a federal law to challenge the federal government (because federal land) to not "substantial burden" their religious freedom? Thats the whole point(major point) of how this country was founded, religious freedom from the government. It's one of the more good faith uses of a law that has been weaponized against minorities. And they keep losing anyway, it has to be the weakest issues in this pro-BAAJA promotion campaign -- which should make others question how the rest of it holds up as well | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism a day ago | parent | next [-] | | My point is that this is not native sovereign land and BAJAA is more about clearing away the numerous types of lawsuits that all sorts of groups can bring that hamstring development in federal lands. The RFRA case is one such type of lawsuit, although not impacted by BAJAA (too bad, the RFRA is a terrible law in my veiw). > Thats the whole point(major point) of how this country was founded, religious freedom from the government. I would be very happy if we repealed the RFRA and returned to the well established case law for fundamental 1st amendment protections. | | | |
| ▲ | consensus1 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What about my religious freedom to not give a shit about their primitive superstitions and what land they consider sacred? | | |
| ▲ | 1659447091 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > What about my religious freedom to not give a shit about their primitive superstitions Thats not how religious freedom works in the US, unfortunately. There is no freedom from non-state religion clause. You are certainly free to not give a shit, but the laws and the government dont give a shit that you don't give a shit | | |
| ▲ | consensus1 2 days ago | parent [-] | | No, it does work that way. My freedom of religion means I don't have to respect their bullshit superstitions. They can declare arbitrary pieces of land "sacred" all day long, but they have no right to stop the rest of us from building roads and pipelines right through it anyway. | | |
| ▲ | 1659447091 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > No, it does work that way. It really does though. And you are misattributing the why you don't have to give shit about their "bullshit superstitions". Are you from the US? This is taught in grade school... |
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| ▲ | whimsicalism 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Pendulum has swung far too far towards historic preservation over the last half century. | |
| ▲ | lakeviewterrace 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Imagine running HVDC lines through tribal lands What if they only ran the transmission lines behind their eyesore casinos? | | |
| ▲ | cowlevel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Do property rights end when the stuff on your property is ugly? | | |
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| ▲ | chickenbig 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is true on the assumption of inflexible demand. Flexible demand may change this, especially reducing non-market capacity payments, for instance. https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/rethinking-l... |
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| ▲ | pyrale 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > it is our policies around how difficult it is to provision new power (or build almost anything at all) in the US. The issue isn't how difficult it is to provision new power, it's that no matter how cheap it will be and how unregulated it will be, datacenters will look to 1) skirt environmental law, and 2) arbitrage cheaper areas that end up being forced to split the price to increase production between the dcs and the locals. Very large consumers should be required to pay for new production when it's obvious that only them benefit from it, there's absolutely no reason to split the bill with the locals, especially when datacenter have close to zero local economic benefits. |
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| ▲ | JeremyNT 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Congress could fix this problem tomorrow. And in fact there is a bipartisan bill (BAAJA) that would go a long ways (although not all the way) towards fixing it. Now yes even if we fix these policies there would be a time lag on new generation being connected, but there is no reason to leave this problem in place. There's plenty of reason to leave the problem in place. The current regime is corrupt, and energy scarcity benefits entrenched fossil fuel players who are cozy with the administration. Congress has up until now given its endorsement to all of this. Will a new Congress care? Time will tell. |
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| ▲ | retwakm4 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Thank you for doing the work of keeping in the know on this sort of topic and notifying us all of the bill. I'll check it out and send a letter to my congressmen if it checks out. |
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| ▲ | xboxnolifes 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Aren't most markets fixed supply, at least in the short to medium term? Outside of something like software (where you can just copy paste code and hardware is usually not the limiting factor), there is a ramp-up period between an increased demand and an increased supply. No matter how you want to spin it, a huge increase in energy demand is going to have an increased in energy costs for at least months to years. |
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| ▲ | verdverm 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If BAAJA means that data center companies can install jet engine gas turbines to power their needs, people are not going to be happy. I agree the permitting process has hindered building in America, but I'm not convinced the current regimes in charge can craft legislation that actually helps people. America keeps voting for something new because the last attempt hasn't changed the status quo. |
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| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > data center companies can install jet engine gas turbines to power their needs Is there a source for this? | | |
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| ▲ | omgwtfbyobbq 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It could be both. I think people reasonably state it's data centers driving up prices more than other things because we've power as a mostly fixed supply in many places in the US for a while, and the recent increase in lower income/rural areas had correlated all with data center expansion as opposed to other things like EV adoption, etc... |
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| ▲ | detourdog 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There are rural parts of Massachusetts that have run out of natural gas and electric delivery bandwidth. The simplest solution is non-grid connected power and heat generation. Doing this requires no real change in regulation since the power sources are stand alone. Local building codes are the only regulations. |
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| ▲ | cowlevel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | isn't the simplest solution to upgrade the grid? What non-connected power do you envision that isn't natural gas and isn't so expensive you may as well connect it to the grid and upgrade the grid to handle it? | | |
| ▲ | detourdog 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Solar PV and solar thermal. Batteries and insulation. Our population density is very low. More efficient heating would go a long way and the upgrades would help the local trades. Using less is the same as generating more. We could also go micro grid and turn our sewage treatment into anerobic digester and we are surrounded by wind farm. Our entire county would need a wind farm a third the size of cape wind 100k homes. I’d upgrading the grid made sense I assume National Grid and Berkshire Gas would do it. | | |
| ▲ | cowlevel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Where are you putting acres of photovoltaics that are so cheap they're not worth upgrading the transmission as well? | | |
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| ▲ | cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >isn't the simplest solution to upgrade the grid? On paper, sure. In reality they'd probably have to secede from the state to do it. |
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| ▲ | rconti 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the cost of capital improvements is divvy'd up among ratepayers, and a huge amount of new generation needs to be built out and amortized over a large period of time, and the datacenters pay less per kWh than the residential consumers, residential rates go up regardless. |
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| ▲ | text0404 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| BAAJA is massive deregulation of an environmentally harmful industry. Instead of eliminating the few safeguards communities have to protect their local environment and giving corporations the ability to circumvent public health concerns, we should move towards more sustainable energy and cease investing in fossil fuel infrastructure. All BAAJA does is transfer authority from local governments/communities to private developers and corporate interests. And do we really think that giving corporations more power to make more money is somehow going to lessen the cost for consumers? Have you seen that play out that way in the past two years? |
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| ▲ | joquarky 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why doesn't the simple solution of a superlinear cost curve ever get mentioned? It's pretty simple: the more you use, the more you pay per unit. |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Exactly. Nobody ever wants to ask the next question. Why can't these rural areas just let this outside money build power infra at the drop of a hat? Rules. Who's rules? Well it wasn't the town in the middle of nowhere that got screwed when steel mill closed or the glass cookware plant packed up for Vietnam who wrote the rules that's for sure... |
