alt Hacker NewsThe thing people are pissed about is giving better rates to datacenters.
Compare this to most of Europe (and Texas if I understood correctly) where the detacenters buy their electricity from the same market as everyone else (in Europe the spot market or futures) meaning they effectively pay the same price as everyone else.
It’s when they do some back room deal with the local public utility to get 50% off and offload the real costs to the public when people get angry.
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I don't think the mechanism is that different, and even if it was Europe, etc would have the same issue - data centers would still bid up the price for existing capacity, and the future capacity added to accommodate the dcs would be added at a higher marginal rate too because scarcity of new supply + base load nature of dc loads. So the problem will get worse before it gets better
Building a data center in my country is so expensive only Microsoft and Google do it.
The paperwork and environmental laws just aren't worth it.
Is there an example of this happening? Isn't the problem that datacenters are drawing electricity at the market rate and driving the cost up, rather than paying a surcharge for the difference?