AI Boom Sparks Fight Over Soaring Power Costs
- Reference: 0178502996
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/29/138232/ai-boom-sparks-fight-over-soaring-power-costs
- Source link:
Virginia utility Dominion Energy received requests from data center developers requiring 40 gigawatts of electricity by the end of 2024, enough to power at least 10 million homes, and proposed measures requiring longer-term contracts and guaranteed payments. Ohio became one of the first states to mandate companies pay more connection costs after receiving power requests exceeding 50 times existing data center usage.
Tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Amazon plan to spend $80 billion, $85 billion, and $100 billion respectively this year on AI infrastructure, while utilities worry that grid upgrade costs will increase rates for residential customers.
Further reading : [2]The AI explosion means millions are paying more for electricity
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/ai-data-center-power-costs-bbfcd862
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/here-s-who-s-paying-for-the-explosion-in-ai-and-cloud-computing/ar-AA1JncI0
As the old saying goes (Score:1)
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. This capacity will get built on the tax payer dime because paying congress is cheaper.
Re:As the old saying goes (Score:4)
Why? I don't see anything particularly mendacious with the statement.
Just turn of all the crypto mining crap (Score:1)
And there would be sufficient power for all at reasonable prices.
We all pay (Score:3)
There is nothing new about this. When public services have to be expanded to serve new private businesses, everybody pays the costs. Home builders build developments and everyone in the school district pays for the expansion of the schools needed to serve the additional kids. If there is increased demand on the electric grid the cost of building the new facilities required are shared by everyone, not just those creating the new demand. These kinds of public subsidies are rarely recognized. The cost of meeting the new energy demands for AI is going to be shared by all of us. The only way around it is to require the companies to build their own private power plants disconnected from the public grid. And even then, we have to deal with the issue of available resources to build those plants.
There is a discussion elsewhere on slashdot about a new Chinese AI technology. They have come up with a replacement solutions for the high end processors that they can't get because of sanctions. But their solution uses more power than the current high end processors. The article makes the point that this is not a serious limitation in China because they have very large established industry building new power plants of all descriptions. The article contrasts this with the United States which has a much more limited capacity to build power plants. The difference means that power consumption is a real limitation for the United States' AI industry,but much less of a constraint for China's.
We haven't even talked about the impact of the demand for new energy on efforts to replace the use of fossil fuels. If the limited capacity to build new power plants is being used for AI, where is the replacement power for closing legacy fossil fuel plants.?
Re: (Score:3)
> The cost of meeting the new energy demands for AI is going to be shared by all of us.
Well this is where the subjectivity comes into play, a lot of people are not convinced AI is worth absorbing more shared costs.
For a completely hyperbolic example but if a company came in and said "We have a new firm that takes your elderly relatives and processes them into nutrient paste. It requires 6GW of new power capacity but you all get some of the nutrient paste and it keeps the nation out of a nutrient paste gap" many would say "I dunno, we don't really care about that and seems like a waste of ene
Re: (Score:2)
then the AI should pay for the upgrade as it is replacing employment costs. means for every JOB AI costs, equivalent taxes should be paid for that job by the AI company and the company that used the tech that it took away.
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> I can see the pitch of a new housing development or a factory to a town of people as an economic upside worth the shared costs.
There is no "pitch" really required. Home builders have to have some permits, but the local utility can't really decide it isn't going to provide power to those homes. The school district can't decide not to teach the kids who live there. The highway department can't tell the people they can't drive during rush hour because the roads are full. No one is going to ask the public whether it thinks a business is important enough to receive public services.
My bet would be the current Supreme Court would find any
Re: (Score:2)
There is though, anecdote but in my neighborhood a new large development is going up and they had to do open meetings, public opinion, votes and such because specifically it would come with some changes in taxation and other public services. This is it's second go around, it was denied the first time.
Any large project has some sort of buy-in from the town, just a matter of how much notice and pressure there is, it's the whole bedrock of NIMBYism.
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Things may have changed since the early 80's, but I co-oped at a utility. Back then, if you wanted a wire/xformer for a property, the deal was they figured out the cost, divided by 24, and that was the minimum you paid each month for service, even if you used 0. I don't see a difference here. AI is asking for a new substation, bigger wires, etc. Let them pay that minimum for 2 years and then they pay what they use after that. Now I never knew about that deal until I co-oped. I think there are many details t
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're underestimating the amount of regulation involved. Pay attention the next time a large housing development is proposed. Everything you brought up gets brought up in public hearings. They have to deal with the zoning board, school board, public services commission, planning department, highway department, civil engineers, and the town/city council.
Basically, the public is asked, and they often say no.
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Are you attending the planning, zoning and public service commission meetings where companies looking to build data centers (basically a factory that produces intangible things), and thus hearing their pitch? If not, why would you think "AI companies have done a piss-poor job of that"? I mean, that must not be the case because they are succeeding in getting permission to build.
And can we please remember that most power companies are regulated utilities that must ask permission to raise rates? Or that
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Are you paying higher rates? If so, it's because Dominion asked for permission to do so in a series of public hearings, where your feedback was sought.
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> There is nothing new about this. When public services have to be expanded to serve new private businesses, everybody pays the costs. Home builders build developments and everyone in the school district pays for the expansion of the schools needed to serve the additional kids.
Home builders pay proffers to local governments to pay for new schools when they apply to build subdivisions. They also pay hookup fees for public utilities to fund expansions. I had to write a $10,000 check to my water utility just for the right to connect to public water (and another $50,000 if sewer was available).
$10, (Score:2)
> I had to write a $10,000 check to my water utility just for the right to connect to public water (and another $50,000 if sewer was available).
You are right, there are fees. They almost never cover the full costs of expansion. A new water plant costs a lot more than $10,000. And, no, I am not suggesting you should pay for it. But it will get paid for.
There is something deeply frustrating (Score:5, Insightful)
About having my electricity taken away by the technology that's also poised to take away my livelihood.
I think one of the things folks don't realize is that the upper class is painfully aware that they are dependent on us pleads as consumers for their wealth and prestige and they don't like it.
They want to go back to being Gods like the days of the divine right of kings. Completely unmored from the concerns of lesser species of human. And AI is there ticket to doing that.
AI exists to allow wealth to access skill without skill accessing wealth. It is the fundamental breakdown in the capitalist system and the social contracts used to maintain it. Techno feudalism.
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Shut up Eloi /s
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Coward,
That was a long rant and I didn't bother reading past the first idiotic sentence. Such an asinine claim was all I needed to know that you were just an angry moron wasting everyone's time.
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its good to be the king?
Technology NOT AI (Score:3)
If you look at the graph of electrical usage you see it is a steady rise with a slight downturn during the covid years.
There is no sudden increase due to AI. There is a clear increase due to increased use of electronic equipment. Bitcoin, electric cars, etc. all contributed just as much as AI.
AI is merely the most modern use of electricity, not a drastic change.
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Did you read the summary? "Virginia utility Dominion Energy received requests from data center developers requiring 40 gigawatts of electricity by the end of 2024" For context, all of Texas today is drawing around 40-70GW. ALL. 40 is the TOTAL for what will be in use tonite and just datacenters in VA are asking for that much juice. I'd call that sudden and extraordinary.
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> There is no sudden increase due to AI. There is a clear increase due to increased use of electronic equipment. Bitcoin, electric cars, etc. all contributed just as much as AI.
This is just plain incorrect.
The freaking summary points out that "Tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Amazon plan to spend $80 billion, $85 billion, and $100 billion respectively this year on AI infrastructure." That's a quarter trillion dollars worth of infrastructure (that has not a thing to do with bitcoin or EVs) which is going to require a shit ton of power.
On a more personal and anecdotal note, I work for a company that serves the power industry and one of our customers (a gas turbine manufacturer) wi
This complaint doesn't make sense. (Score:2)
Power companies are mostly regulated utilities that have to ask for permission to raise rates. Data centers are customers of the power company and pay per watt for what they use, just like everyone else. A new data center is no different from any other large increase in demand, which means this is a problem we have already solved.
So, what's the problem? That we aren't generating enough electricity? That's not new and fixing it is more about fighting the people who don't want more electricity generati
Costs (Score:3)
AI companies need to spend billions of dollars across all of the countries from which they are sucking down massive electrical resources.
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Maybe permission to build and expand data centres should come with obligations to upgrade the grid and install new renewable generation too.
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Isn't that on the utility company? It's their grid and their generators. Making sure there will be enough power for their facility to run is the responsibility of whoever picks where to build the data center. In some cases, that has meant working out a deal with the utility to fund expansion, for which they are condemned (here for sure). In other cases, it meant building in places where there already was enough power to supply the facility, for which they are condemned.
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If they had a choice they would externalize as much of the cost as possible, and use the cheapest source of energy possible. Fortunately renewables and storage are the cheapest now, but there is a lot of fossil fuel generation that is a sunk cost and subsidized by other users, and areas where there is poor connectivity to the wider area.
The latter seems to be one of the points of contention.
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The California PUC requires large consumers to pay their connection costs-- line and substation upgrades for starters. Paying for generation upgrades as well is a pretty easy provision to force as well.
What it will ultimately do though is combine (or at least couple) combined cycle turbines with data centers for the majority of capacity. Expect big rushes to build data centers on Indian reservations and states with lax emissions regulations.
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Requiring individual companies to build their own bespoke power generation is inefficient and wasteful.
Datacenters should buy electricity just like anyone else. If the utilities need money to finance that, there's a way to do that using something called "capitalism", which means they get the money from investors by issuing bonds or equity.
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They wouldn't even have to build it themselves. They could just invest enough for some other company to do it, somewhere else. Whatever gets built would probably feed into the grid, not just the datacentre. They are going to want some hefty batteries on side for outages, so could go grid scale.
The basic goal is to stop them externalizing their costs.
Re: Costs (Score:2)
There is the issue of risk. Typically, utilities take this on when financing system upgrades to serve new loads. Charging their customr base for the cost of funds. But on occasion, the risks become too large. Or the forecasts of power sales too uncertain. As in the case of [1]WPPSS [wikipedia.org]. When those new income sources walk away, or were never there to begin with, the other rate payers get stuck with the bill. No thanks.
AI/cloud computing/crypto have a very high potential of being a flash in the pan, so to speak. Th
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest
Re: (Score:2)
> Datacenters should buy electricity just like anyone else.
Their sudden, massive gobbling of scarce electrical resources are causing those scarce resources to be become even scarcer. Most utilities are regulated, and prevent them from operating as a free market (and rightfully so, in most cases). If these data centers were subject to capitalistic principles, they would be paying 100 times what they're paying now.
Regulations meant to protect you and me from the excesses of unrestrained natural monopolies are now working again us, which means we all pay higher prices
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Isn't that exactly what they're doing? Spending billions on building facilities and then more every month for the power they use?
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Paying for power is one thing, but if the power demand requires an electric grid upgrade, it ends up being the consumers who pay that cost, even though AI is not providing them any benefit. This is similar to when Internet capacity in a neighborhood starts to max out, the ISP comes in and adds more capacity for that neighborhood, but then, who ends up paying in the long run for the cost of the neighborhood capacity increase?
Now, picture if it's just one person who is using so much bandwidth that it forces
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One solution is to have different price for electricity and transfer of that electricity. Then you can set the price of transfer based on top demand. This way those who demand most from the grid, will pay most to the grid. And those who require most electricity, will pay most to the produces of electricity.