It's a deliberate reference/meme that is basically used to acknowledge the precedent of overly exuberant predictions of cost in an emerging technology but argue "however, this time it's true".

Of course, perilous territory for future irony depending on how your prediction plays out.

It's really quite unfortunate that the promise was not delivered, mostly for political reasons. I hope that a new wave of reactors and the dire need for clean energy restarts the nuclear race.

https://www.wired.com/2008/02/ff-free/

"Between digital economics and the wholesale embrace of King's Gillette's experiment in price shifting, we are entering an era when free will be seen as the norm, not an anomaly. How big a deal is that? Well, consider this analogy: In 1954, at the dawn of nuclear power, Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, promised that we were entering an age when electricity would be "too cheap to meter." Needless to say, that didn't happen, mostly because the risks of nuclear energy hugely increased its costs. But what if he'd been right? What if electricity had in fact become virtually free? The answer is that everything electricity touched—which is to say just about everything—would have been transformed. Rather than balance electricity against other energy sources, we'd use electricity for as many things as we could—we'd waste it, in fact, because it would be too cheap to worry about."

... What Mead understood is that a psychological switch should flip as things head toward zero. Even though they may never become entirely free, as the price drops there is great advantage to be had in treating them as if they were free. Not too cheap to meter, as Atomic Energy Commission chief Lewis Strauss said in a different context, but too cheap to matter. Indeed, the history of technological innovation has been marked by people spotting such price and performance trends and getting ahead of them."

My issue is that datacenter energy costs are being prioritized for commerce over residential use, so the average consumer is paying more for electricity, because a datacenter needs more electricity and they're getting tax breaks. Assuming this all improves efficiency for new products like automated robotics, there is a debatable benefit. Jevon's Paradox has no ceiling, except the environment, and people's 401ks.

On the other hand, this did work out in other areas. I pay a flat monthly rate for all-I-care-to-eat internet access, for example. My email provider has limits on storage space but I don’t get charged per email sent or received. It’s not a crazy concept on its face, nuclear power just didn’t work out as well as was hoped.