Think of the shareholders!
Comment on AI Electric Bills
snooggums@piefed.world 2 days agoSure, but the companies driving the increased demand should be paying for the increased capacity directly instead of having the general public subsidize it.
Gerudo@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 day ago
Some AI companies are doing this because the cost of relying on the open market is too high to build in certain areas and the standard of electricity required by the data center may be something that the grid can’t supply.
There are also some countries, like Saudi Arabia, trying to lure data centers into their countries by offering cheap land, permitting, and cheap electricity.
AA5B@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Yeah but the examples I read about also used that strategy to get around state and local regulations for things like renewable energy portfolios.
Good for them if they’re building acres of solar and storage. Bad for us if they’re using diesel generators
TwoTiredMice@feddit.dk 2 days ago
How would that work? With a flat fee or depending on whether ai companies are tipping the scale to a more expensive marginal price?
queermunist@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Make every kWh above the average power draw have a higher cost, that increases further with every additional kWh.
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Colombia has price discrimination for residential areas: households in richer areas have to pay more than those in poorer areas. I don’t know how good the actual implementation works out for the people there, but it was in effect when I was there more than 10 years ago and it still seems to be (see “estratos” here: enel.com.co/…/pliego-tarifario-enel-diciembre-202…). If that is possible for different areas of one city, of course we could make data centers pay more for 1 kWh than a private consumer would.
It just won’t happen in our hyper-capitalist north american and european countries.
TwoTiredMice@feddit.dk 2 days ago
I don’t know how wide spread smart meters are in the US, but it should be fairly simple so have an extra tariff on these kind of consumers, or perhaps just tariffs during peak periods.
At least it could be enforced that the surplus heat from data centers had to be reused in some way, could be residental heating or ptx.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Smart meters aren’t necessary for that. We already have different rates for different usage levels.
Smart meters are more useful to vary rates by time of day, to help adjust demand for the level of supply
CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world 2 days ago
No no no! It’s cheaper for them to pay off politicians for special rates and then pass on the cost to the consumer! Won’t you think of the poor billionaires!