County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

https://www.404media.co/henrico-virginia-datacenter-energy-cost-email/

by 01-_- • 23 days ago

427 162 23 days ago

404media.co

cdrnsf• 23 days ago

Unplug the data centers instead.

markvdb• 23 days ago

Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.

jeffbee2• 23 days ago

Yes, absolutely. This memo implies that with the same measures they could have saved 80% of the amount, regardless of the rate change. If that is significant they should have done this long ago.

JohnFen• 23 days ago

True. But asking schools to conserve electricity while encouraging data centers to waste it is perverse.

ben_w• 23 days ago

In much the same way that letting a fart out makes sense even when you're in a hurricane.

The list they give is overwhelmingly dominated by one item:

  “Turn off your lights when leaving your workspace, including when you leave for the day. Turn off your computers/laptops at the end of each workday.  If your workspace has windows, adjust the blinds to manage heat from sunlight.  Unplug any appliances, chargers, or other electrical items when they are not in use. Please limit use of (or refrain altogether from using) space heaters. A typical space heater alone can cost the county from $150 to $300 per year in electricity costs.”

Lights, these days, are going to be in the order of 10 W. A space heater, 1000-3000.

$20 of AI tokens over a month? Probably somewhere between, on average, 40-320 W, depending on how you weight the cost of training and which recent-ish model you're using.

Tokenmaxxers? They're the heavy users. $2k/month (or whatever) gets you a lot of electricity through those GPUs.

jeffbee2• 23 days ago

Virginia (Dominion) electric rates went up dramatically, and are now in the same rough price band as 29 other states, because they were well below average. Important context, in my humble opinion.

gedy• 23 days ago

We can't leave money on the table for all those below average prices - so let's raise them all to the average... oh wait

genewitch2• 22 days ago

Is this why median is usually better when discussing things, since the median may not change at all or may go down in this circumstance?

obviously the average goes up in this circumstance...

scottndecker• 23 days ago

If everyone turned off their lights 100% of the time they left their workstation, they could power those additional data centers for about one second.

burnte• 23 days ago

Billionaries are willing to have us make that sacrifice!

skeeter2020• 23 days ago

not to mention you'll get much farther, faster & easier with timers on the lights than some sort of 100% voluntary participation dream.

dylan6046• 23 days ago

ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have

emsign• 23 days ago

"Who needs public schools anyway? I pay my kid's teachers salary directly."

GuestFAUniverse• 22 days ago

And the rest has AI. All is fine. /s

hakunin• 23 days ago

Just use smart lights that feed video into an llm to check if lights should shut down.

iamtheworstdev• 22 days ago

hahah that is so wonderfully malicious compliance

imhoguy• 23 days ago

Turn off computers and phones. No need for DCs then.

preinheimer• 23 days ago

You want to use a lot of electricity? Great! We sell electricity. We will need cash in advance to handle some upgrades, rather than passing those costs on to other rate payers.

jimmydddd• 23 days ago

Exactly! Everyone's been conditioned that Data Centers = higher electric bills for residents. Of course, another option is for politicians to put any added costs on the data center companies. One tech guy even proposed, in order to gain wider acceptance, having the data center companies pay the whole electric bill for the town, so that data centers = 0 electric bills for residents.

mwigdahl• 22 days ago

Was that tech guy a crypto miner by chance?

advisedwang• 22 days ago

Power companies don't want to turn away customers in order to keep prices LOW! If you want that outcome, you need a government intervention (which could be laws around utility pricing, requirments for DC buildout etc)

Tangurena23• 22 days ago

My state almost passed one such bill this year. Lobbyists got it put in time-out until this year's legislative session ran out.

nonethewiser3• 22 days ago

Isnt that what virgina did in the new rate class this article mentions? Data centers have to enter long term contracts with minimums (regardless of usage) to help power companies plan ahead.

https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/dominion-energy-rate...

whimsicalism4• 22 days ago

passing those costs on to other rate payers.

You are describing the normal process of purchasing things and how prices work. There is no nefarious passing on.

We should redistribute money from the wealthy to households, but I'm not sure if rate price controls beyond what already exists is the correct way to do it. The real issue with these data centers is tax jurisdiction shopping.

bigbadfeline2• 21 days ago

If "passing those costs on to other rate payers" is "the normal process of purchasing things" then the "normal process" is thoroughly and completely FUBAR-ed. That's a lot worse than some single, isolated case.

arjie• 23 days ago

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.

cmiles82• 23 days ago

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

Quinner• 23 days ago

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.

downrightmike2• 23 days ago

public infrastructure should be owned by the public

larkost• 22 days ago

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.

malshe2• 23 days ago

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!)

freediddy2• 22 days ago

I pay over $0.51/kWh in electricity thanks to PG&E.

culi2• 23 days ago

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.

butterfi• 23 days ago

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

dylan6046• 23 days ago

I'd imagine your normal Colo facility uses a lot less power than an AI data center.

eskatonic• 22 days ago

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

Tangurena23• 22 days ago

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

cmiles82• 23 days ago

Do we scale back AI slop for a few days or pull power back from schools? Easy, kids can suffer, give them some ice water.

The AI bubble can’t pop soon enough.

gadflyinyoureye2• 23 days ago

Maybe it would help remove useless and harmful tech from schools. Books don't need batteries.

galleywest200• 22 days ago

Seems AI use at younger ages has detrimental effects. Let’s remove that from schools while we are at it.

mrweasel• 22 days ago

If we took the money Accenture spends on tokens so that their staff can convert PDFs to presentations(1) we can probably fund a school or two.

1) https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies...

rdtsc• 23 days ago

The ~spice~ inference must flow.

Some of the data centers now run disconnected on gas turbines 24/7, which is better for electricity prices but they can be big nuisance for people living nearby.

rho138• 23 days ago

In more ways than one: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus...

culi2• 23 days ago

It is also often a violation of the Clean Air Act but we don't have good regulation in place to actually hold them accountable

kube-system• 22 days ago

And SCOTUS just today made a ruling that will increase money in politics, so it's not going to get better any time soon.

downrightmike2• 23 days ago

excess pollution and noise are more than a nuisance

zamadatix• 23 days ago

I think the issues are exacerbated by the US going from "regular growth in electricity generation" for decades to "dead flat" for the last ~2 decades. I think we're finding generation isn't just a switch you turn on and reap the benefits of overnight if it's not what you were already planning on doing https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e...

Part of solving that may be in what the article touches on - how to get the generation built before the DC shows up rather than as a promise after.

malshe2• 23 days ago

Maybe the county could just ask its employees to work from home so that its office electricity bill goes down to zero. A win-win solution!

jonas212• 23 days ago

This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on electricity prices in the US [1] and found that most of the rate increase in Virginia was attributable to the VCEA, and that load growth had a mitigating effect on price increases.

If you look at the overall report (not just Virginia), the places where electricty costs are rising the fastest are generally not the same places where lots of new datacenters are being built. It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here.

[1] https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/factors-influencing-recent-...

toomuchtodo2• 23 days ago

So don't allow data centers to connect until enough clean energy has been brought online to meet their needs without impacting cost or availability for retail ratepayers. It's easy really. Say no.

It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer in some way to enable (through increased rates or risk of blackouts), when they have very little positive impact for everyone except a small minority investing in them.

It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are a lot of factors at play here.

It is because they are the problem. We need as much clean energy as quickly as possible to mitigate climate change, we do not need data centers, broadly speaking.

(if you replaced all of the farmland/ag land, the size of the state of Oregon, harvested for ethanol with solar, you would have more electrical generation than all current US electrical generation combined as of this comment; this is simply a question of will, proven by China's solar PV deployment rates [installing ~90-100GW of solar PV per month])

Kamq• 22 days ago

Their post said that load growth had a mitigating effect on prices. Not letting the data centers come online would, presumably, result in higher prices.

That seems slightly weird, but that sounds like there's some large fixed costs that they can spread over the entire subscriber base, so the extra data centers are picking up some of those fixed costs.

aftbit• 22 days ago

It's so strange to me that the argument previously was "we don't have enough energy generation for EVs and heat pumps to electrify and decarbon" but data centers are thought of as must run load that everyone has to suffer in some way to enable

This is because the argument that we didn't have the grid capacity for EVs, heat pumps, and residential solar was never sincere. You could tell because the followup was never "and we should invest more in the grid" but rather the reactionary "and that's why we can't use EVs."

The same people would be opposed to data centers, if not for the fact that the AI buildout is making them all rich.

baggy_trough• 22 days ago

Is there any reason to single out data centers, other than that they are the degrowther bugaboo of the year? Such a rule should apply to any industrial use such as a new factory, if it is to exist at all, which it shouldn't.

sunshinesnacks2• 22 days ago

Capacity shortfalls and needs to conserve (i.e., asking customers to reduce usage) are not necessarily 1:1 with rate increases and overall electricity costs. Especially in the short term.

In other words, large “base loads” like data centers could both reduce the average power bill AND contribute to capacity shortages and load shedding.

LeifCarrotson• 22 days ago

I work in industrial manufacturing and automation, several of my customers (those running steel foundries, aluminum die casting, plastic recycling and extrusion, and other power-intensive processes) represent a sizeable fraction of the utility usage in the small towns in which they're located.

They often have an individual contract with the utility and participate in load regulation: when you need liquefy a few tons of steel, those heaters have a lot of thermal inertia. If A/C loads are high they'll turn the power down, if wind output is high, they'll turn it up, and so on.

Do data centers participate in the same sort of dynamic pricing and power adjustment? I understand that they're spinning up and powering down instances on demand, and that those demands are somewhat outside of their control, but are they able (and willing, and desirous of reducing their electric bills) to dynamically adjust compute in response to utility rates?

sunshinesnacks2• 18 days ago

I’m a few days late, but not sure why I got all the downvotes on this.

Many regions/markets have relatively stable retail rate structures, i.e., residential and most commercial customers don’t pay day-to-day and hour-to-hour electricity market prices. Their per-kWh and per-kW rates are adjusted on much longer time scales, like once a year.

So, big base load customers sign contracts in one year, resulting in better utilization of grid assets, so prices stay lower in the next year(s). But if those customers are not flexible (or are not on a rate structure that encourages them to be flexible), they could contribute to short-term capacity shortages this year. And that will have no impact on many rate payers’ bills, ant least not before rates get adjusted later.

sheepscreek• 22 days ago

It's easy to blame datacenters, but there are many factors at play here.

Henrico County currently has 37 data-centres with ~2 gigawatts capacity (expected to reach 3 gigawatts).

Apparently, 1 MW can power approximately 834 homes annually. So 2 gigawatts would be closer to powering > 1.6 million homes.

Surely, that kind of concentrated demand is going to affect electricity distribution costs for everyone, which is what we are seeing now.

infecto7• 22 days ago

The county narrative is cherry picking imo and poor journalism. They are part of PJM which contains one of the largest data centers hubs. The PJM grid serves something like 67mm residents. PJM also uses an annual forward capacity auction to set prices and that is at least partly to blame in price increases. They are trying to forecast peak demand 3 years in advance to set a price for power plant owners to stay online in the event of needing that peak capacity. It’s poorly designed and why they have had such significant spikes there.

CaliforniaKarl• 22 days ago

I'm surprised that the 404 Media article does not mention anything about this. At least, searching for the word "Clean" did not return any results.

nonethewiser3• 22 days ago

The article is shit.

- electricity costs are rising

- there are many data centers

- claims data centers raise costs

- never actually shows how these new data centers are driving up electricity costs

Funny. They imply causation but never show it. If they had evidence that data centers caused this 25% increase, or a large percentage of it, dont you think they would show it?

Actually, you could write the exact same article but sub out data centers with the clean energy rollout.

Legend24404• 22 days ago

I'm not surprised. 404 Media are anti-big tech and anti-AI activists. They are not shy about their agenda and do not claim to be unbiased.

jollyllama• 22 days ago

Coal was made unprofitable by fiat and the plants were demolished (supply decreased).

Then, datacenters (demand increased, to put it mildly).

The explanation that one chooses for this is a function of one's other politics but the fact is, one has become a political rallying cry (opposition to demand increase) and the other (blame for supply decrease) has not, and this is the discussion we find ourselves in.

elgertam• 22 days ago

As a Virginian, this is good information to have. I see a lot of ludicrous objections to data centers here (the most ludicrous being water consumption, when most of our data centers have closed-loop systems and regardless the humidity here isn't evaporating water).

I've suspected that the energy regulations and the ruling party's close connection with Dominion Energy (the Governor recently attempted to fire the chair of Virginia Tech's board and replace him with the CEO of Dominion) have had an impact on power use more than data centers themselves.

BugsJustFindMe• 22 days ago

the most ludicrous being water consumption, when most of our data centers have closed-loop systems

Nb. Still many do not. Also, closed-loop systems use more electricity to operate, so it's not a cost-free solution.

legitster• 22 days ago

In the long run, green energy and data centers are ultimately going to be complimentary.

One of the biggest problems with investing in a renewable grid is curtailment and managing demand or production spikes. In California, they already have to turn off solar plants during peak hours to help manage overproduction.

Even if you have massive quantities of energy storage, you don't have enough "inertia" in the grid to keep power levels consistent as DC power sources flick on and off.

Data centers can act as massive variable loads that can ramp up or down that turn excess energy into something vaguely profitable. And they can also help to create demand for more supply of intermittent green energy sources.

smallmancontrov• 22 days ago

If data centers can outbid poor people, the poor peoples' air conditioning becomes the variable load. Nana sweats so that Zuck can tokenmaxx.

Grombobulous2• 22 days ago

I appreciate that you linked a paper to support your opinion on this matter, though I read the summary PDF a whole lot differently than you did. I’m not sure I’d blame renewables anywhere near as much as you did.

For one thing, energy demand hasn’t been increasing at the consumer level per capita. So you either have a growing population or growing commercial usage (like with data centers) or both driving energy demand.

Is there some literature that points to an idea that it’s faster to build a gas or coal power plant compared to a renewable one? My understanding is that solar is cheaper than gas, right? Even solar plus grid scale batteries are in a similar ballpark. And let’s not forget that other infrastructure like transmission lines and substations do not have any concept of renewable versus not.

The last thing I’ll point out is that we literally have to switch to renewables. There’s no long term versus short term, really, when we think about it. If we don’t make the switch we’ll actually put all of this planet in a lot bigger trouble than asking people to set their air conditioner thermostats a couple degrees higher.

omnimus• 22 days ago

If you switch to renewables too quickly you will damage the investments in fossil energy sources that could be making big profits for decades to come.

jonas212• 22 days ago

Have a look at slide 53 of the summary pdf. It's specifically about Virginia, and it says the same thing I wrote above (minus my personal opinion about 100% renewables being a good thing). Just to be clear, it doesn't say that VCEA is the only contributing factor to price increases: they attribute ~70% to VCEA, with higher natural gas prices accounting for the rest. There's a chart in the upper-right of the slide showing how these two factors have contributed over time.

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that solar has a much larger up-front cost than, say, a natural gas plant -- but because there are no ongoing fuel costs, it is expected to be cheaper per kWh over the lifetime of the plant. So this is a great investment in the long term, but there are significant costs that must be absorbed in the short term -- and that's what is impacting prices right now.

8note2• 22 days ago

a different framing of this same information is that Dominion made dumb investment choices in the 2000s and 2010s, locking into electricity that has a fuel cost.

dyauspitr• 22 days ago

This is the way. Build more data centers and mandate they are powered by solar+batteries/nuclear.

jabroni_salad• 23 days ago

The text of the article indicates that the county government sent this message to all government facilities, but I suppose that doesn't make for quite as sexy a headline and a public school is technically a government facility.

I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world for them to illuminate that we don't need to do this?

philipwhiuk• 23 days ago

I appreciate 404 media's mission but isn't there enough stupid shit existing naturally in the world

Like 37 data centres in a small rural county?

khuey• 23 days ago

This is suburban Richmond, not a "small rural county".

toast0• 22 days ago

It's not that rural, it's in the Richmond Metro Area. A quick look at satellite view shows suburbia, not rural, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some parts of the county with larger lots. Virginia has good connectivity for data centers, so I'm not surprised there's lots on the outskirts of their capital. I bet they've got at least 37 warehouses too.

The whole thing seems pretty overblown: County where energy prices are up 25% sends a memo asking employees to conserve electricity doesn't seem worth writing about. If prices are up 25%, I bet the datacenter guys are also working on efficiency. The county isn't asking datacenter peeps to conserve energy, because the county isn't paying their electricity bill.

From the headline, I thought this was going to be schools that signed up to participate in demand response in return for reduced electric rates are being asked to reduce their demand. Growing up in socal, most of the schools were on demand response programs, and sometimes we'd have reduced lighting as a result. I wouldn't expect a lot of datacenters to participate in demand response programs, so the angle would be 'the schools have to turn off their lights, but the datacenters don't do anything' ... ignoring the cost savings the schools signed up for; some datacenters could participate though --- large operators can move traffic and shutdown, idle or limit power for most of the servers, or can switch to local generation; but facilities for small hosting / colocation probably don't have enough insight into their customer loads to move traffic and might not want to run their generators.

skywhopper• 22 days ago

What is your complaint exactly? Is it better that this includes all government services? I think most folks would not immediately think of schools if the headline said “county government buildings”. I think it’s a reasonable editorial choice to emphasize school buildings in the headline.

WarmWash2• 22 days ago

News orgs hardly make any money. There are a few big players, but everyone outside that ring is borderline starving.

So the best way to keep money coming in is to read the vibes of social media, and print stories that fuel those fires. Basically manufacture stories using well established marketing and propaganda techniques to maximize click rates.

Ice cream man selling ice pops in the park becomes "Man seen using treats to lure young children to his van in the park".

Honest headline, criminally misleading takeaway.

frantathefranta• 22 days ago

404media is heavily invested in the anti-datacenter reporting. I'm still subscribed to their RSS feed and like half the posts are datacenter focused (often with a misleading angle).

nonethewiser3• 22 days ago

Like just stating a bunch of facts and implying causation. Never showing causation.

You could basically write the same article but swap data centers for clean energy upgrades.

- rationing request anecdote

- clean energy law dictating cleaner power

- unexamined claim clean energy is increasing prices nationally

- state there is a 25% price increased

Its

- “A” and “B”

- claim “A” causes “B”

- restate “B”

Did I show “A causes B”?

bryan_w3• 22 days ago

I appreciate 404 media's mission but

Really makes you think: should you really support efforts like this when there are better and more honest groups out there? (Cough EFF *cough)

freediddy2• 22 days ago

The greed with which the tech companies and data center providers are consuming electricity will be their downfall. By trying to make a few extra bucks by passing on some of the costs to consumers, it will trigger a huge political backlash that will screw them all. The fact they don't realize this is greed and hubris on their part.

WarmWash2• 22 days ago

Consumers should consider cancelling their AI subscriptions if they don't like datacenters.

slg• 22 days ago

Most consumers don't have any AI subscriptions. Lots of people's primary experience of AI is it being forced on them through integration into existing products and services, more "greed and hubris".

mywittyname• 22 days ago

Most people don't have AI subscriptions. A lot of the most fervent detractor hate AI to the core and refuse to use it as much as possible.

Perhaps we should charge AI subscription "tax" to pay for more renewable energy.

kibwen2• 22 days ago

Not sure if this is sarcastic, but there are effectively no consumers (as opposed to corporations) with AI subscriptions; the number of paid ChatGPT users is a rounding error. In the long run we should not expect the number of paid consumers for LLMs to be significantly greater than the number of paid consumers for search engines.

dguest• 22 days ago

Is there any evidence that individualization of responsibility works better than government policy?

Personally I see no contradiction in using a product despite wanting policies that prevent it: it just implies that you understand the tragedy of the commons.

platevoltage3• 22 days ago

What if we never signed up?

morkalork• 22 days ago

Curiously, also taking place in Virginia, I just a local newspaper was bought out and fired their few journalists after they did an investigative piece on a google datacenters being built in the community.

February: https://www.roanokerambler.com/water-authority-releases-goog...

April: https://cardinalnews.org/2026/04/14/former-roanoke-rambler-o...

This tells me they know what they're doing is unpopular and are willing to squash any opposition.

Tangurena23• 22 days ago

My state almost got a bill passed that would have made data centers pay for the new generating capacity. The House passed it, but the Senate strangled it. Thanks lobbyists!

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/hb593.html

philipallstar2• 22 days ago

The lobbyists are just doing their jobs well. It's the Senate that isn't. Blame the people who you pay taxes to purely to be impartial.

ck2• 22 days ago

"ai" bubble burst cannot come soon enough

but sure would be nice if it would cause an exponential acceleration of fusion development in the meanwhile

however that still has a law of theromodynamics problem of pumping heat into atmosphere

maybe exponential advancement of solar but they've already figured out that cannot improve more than another several percent, and manufacturing is already near peak efficiency

nok22kon• 22 days ago

a few years from now they will advise people to stop eating so much, since they need the farmland for data centers

square_usual• 22 days ago

This is insane reporting. Their own article says the data center buildout happened in 2017. The article they link about it says the same thing. And so rate changes now - in 2026, nearly a full decade after those DCs were built out - are somehow the fault of the measly 37 datacenters there? They don't even say that outright - they're just insinuating this from the title and wording in the artcile to be sneaky about it. This is garbage! They just put "$current_thing bad" in the headline and nobody's really checking that they're straight up lying by omission!

arlattimore• 22 days ago

I'm confused as to why they've allowed the data center power drain (which they knew was going to happen) to cascade into consumer power prices. Surely they should be charging consumers their existing price and charging the data centers an increased price based on their massive usage.

Without some sort of mitigation, the costs keep rising and it'll drive families away from these cities and/or counties to avoid the cost hikes. This is akin to what we're seeing in a lot of major cities with rent, people are living further and further away from where they work, paying taxes in other forms (time, public transport costs, gas costs for their car inc. wear & tear, etc).

Hardly seems fair or right.

shimman• 22 days ago

You're confused why neoliberals want to give out more corporate welfare over helping citizens material needs?

This is literally what they believe in. This is what they have been doing for nearly 50 years. It's the entire purpose of neoliberalism: corporations are more important than citizens.

whimsicalism4• 22 days ago

This is just what happens with a demand shock in any context.

Ritewut• 22 days ago

This is back to the propaganda that people need to recycle because big companies dont want to clean up after themselves.

nerdralph• 22 days ago

The article didn't include the actual power rates. I think the applicable tariff is $3.316/kW of demand + 16.82c/kWh. https://www.scc.virginia.gov/docketsearch/DOCS/89pc01!.PDF

Compared to my local utility (and most of Canada), the demand charge is low, but the per kWh charge is high. NSPower's general tariff is $9.089/kW + 15.738c/kWh for the first 200/mth, and 12.674c/kWh after that. Equivalent rates in Quebec and Manitoba are about half that. https://www.nspower.ca/your-business/save-money-energy/busin...

Current CAD/USD is 0.7, so subtract 30% for NSPower's rates in USD.

382hi• 22 days ago

archived; no ads no trackers: https://nonogra.ph/county-with-37-data-centers-asks-schools-...

whall6• 22 days ago

Can someone more up to speed explain to me why with Virginia’s proximity to one of the largest natural gas reservoirs in the world in West Virginia, they don’t just build new power plants to keep up with electricity demand?

Havoc2• 22 days ago

It's kinda crazy that data centers aren't on some sort of ringfenced scheme.

This whole just throw it on the grid and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane

dmix2• 22 days ago

and residential consumers pick up the increased infra costs is insane

These companies are investing heavily in new energy development?

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/30/data-centers-love-solar-he...

Meta kicked off the year with a 200-megawatt solar deal with multinational electric utility Engie. The purchase went toward a solar farm near one of the company’s existing data centers in Texas. At the time of the deal, Meta already had over 12 gigawatts of generating capacity in its renewable portfolio.
Stargate AI partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Group was reported by Bloomberg to be powered, at least in part, by solar. SB Energy, which is part of SoftBank’s portfolio, is expected to develop solar installations backed by grid-scale batteries.
Meta closed out the month with another massive solar deal, this one with Spanish renewable developer Zelestra. The contract was for 595 megawatts of capacity.
Meta continued its streak in February, investing in a 505-megawatt solar project with Cypress Creek Renewables, which is developing the massive installation in Coleman County, Texas — about 150 miles northwest of Austin.
Microsoft entered the fray in February, too. The company has long been a buyer of renewable energy to power its operations, and added another 389 megawatts of solar in a deal with EDP Renewables North America.
Amazon also made a big purchase, backing a hybrid project on the Iberian Peninsula that includes wind, solar, and pumped-hydroelectric storage. The deal included 476 megawatts total, of which 212 megawatts are solar.
Outside of the U.S., data center operators have also been investing in solar. In India, CtrlS built its own 125-megawatt facility in two phases, the first half of which was finished in June 2024 with the second completed in early February. In South America, Telecom Argentina agreed to buy electricity from a 130-megawatt solar farm developed by MSU Green Energy.
Microsoft added another three solar developments in March, again focusing on the Midwest. The projects span Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri, and they’re being developed by AES. Together, they will provide Microsoft with 475 megawatts of capacity, adding to its considerable 34-gigawatt portfolio.
Cisco got in the game with a 100-megawatt deal with X-Elio, a solar developer owned by Brookfield, an asset manager that has bet big on renewables. The power purchase agreements see Cisco buying capacity from two different Texas solar projects.
Meta added another 200 megawatts of solar to its portfolio in March in a deal with RWE. The solar farm will be built just southeast of Austin.
In Italy, data center operator Data4 signed a 10-year deal with utility Edison Energia to buy power from a 148-megawatt solar farm northwest of Rome.

That was all in 2025^

There's also been big investment in nuclear and natural gas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o

Havoc2• 22 days ago

Think you're missing the point a bit there.

All that generation capacity is great, but you need to get the electrons to the datacenter. And in most jurisdictions the transmission part of the grid is a shared cost. Mostly...there is technically some obligation to pay for upgrades but it doesn't really work.

e.g.

Over 95% of the projects identified passed all of their transmission connection costs onto local people’s electricity bills

It's a real privatize profits/benefit, socialize losses/costs type setup.

[0] https://www.ucs.org/about/news/billions-dollars-unreported-d...

testing22321• 22 days ago

Remember when the grid couldn’t support EVs ? , but amazingly it CAN support Data centres…

Pepperidge farm remembers

ineedasername• 22 days ago

37 data centers and there are plans to build 17 more, including plans to convert hundreds of acres of _Civil War battlefields_ into data centers.

Those poor battlefields. How rarely it is that anyone thinks of their needs.

Legend24404• 22 days ago

Yeah, it's kinda silly to block development on a patch of ground forever because someone fought over it two centuries ago.

Danox• 22 days ago

That's nerve...

helterskelter• 22 days ago

This reminds me of WorldCom. One employee said they knew something was up when the company was posting huge profits but the CEO was sending out emails with progressively more extreme electricity saving measures.

County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'

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