> Electricity prices near data centers go up, right?

I hear this a lot, but the most comprehensive study I've seen found the opposite -- that retail electricity prices tend to decrease as load (from datacenters and other consumers) increases [1].

The places where electricity prices have increased the most since 2019 (California, Hawaii, and the Northeast) are not places where they're building a lot of new datacenters.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061902...

No, they go down, obviously if you think about it. Having a huge volume consumer nearby amortizes away the fixed costs of the grid, which are massive.

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S10406190250006...