alt Hacker NewsI live in Maine. Commercial power is crazy expensive. I don't know why you would build an AI datacenter here in the first place. As an obsessive self-hoster, I've researched building one, and there is no universe in which it makes sense. New Hampshire and Massachusetts are so nearby latency-wise.
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I know little about this region. Why would it be unreasonably more expensive to build on one side of the state line than another?
As has been repeatedly demonstrated[1], it is the presence of new, large consumers that drives down the cost of bulk power by amortizing the infrastructure investments.
Maine voters are, of course, notorious bozos in this field, having voted in a plebiscite in 2021 to cancel the link to Quebec Hydro, which was already substantially completed.
1: For example LBNL's latest banger: Factors influencing recent trends in retail electricity prices in the United States, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061902...
Power is not the most expensive part of data center lifetime cost; especially these days when you're filling them with several billion dollars of nvidia chips. It's still an important consideration of course, but not the only one.
Abundant access to a source of cooling can help offset high grid prices. Well places centres can a ton of money that way.