Big Tech's AI Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0178675440
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/14/1655246/big-techs-ai-data-centers-are-driving-up-electricity-bills-for-everyone
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/business/energy-environment/ai-data-centers-electricity-costs.html
National residential electricity rates have already risen more than 30% since 2020. Tech companies' AI push requires data centers that consumed over 4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with government analysts projecting consumption reaching 12% within three years. American Electric Power warned Ohio regulators that without new rate structures requiring data centers to pay more upfront costs, residents and small businesses would bear much of the expense for grid upgrades.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/business/energy-environment/ai-data-centers-electricity-costs.html
Remember technology is always good (Score:3)
And you should never ever ever question it. Now if you excuse me I've got to put these fragmentation landmines in my garden. Those little kids will stay off my lawn for sure now. And if they won't I've got free mulch. It's a win-win.
Re: Remember technology is always good (Score:1)
Technology a double edged sword.
Re:It's not all AI. Much of the problem is "Green" (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh huh, so how do you explain such a demand for new gas power plants that the cost is going up and the fact that the rate of new NG generation has remained relatively stable with the rate only down 0.6GW for the last 5 years versus the previous 20.
[1]Rush for US gas plants drives up costs, lead times [reuters.com] This was July 21
So what you really mean is coal, you think we should have more coal plants.
Nuclear would be great but despite any news I expect there to be zero movement on nuclear over the next 4 years since I have seen zero evidence Republicans or this admin has any idea how to go about that and are politically diametric to what is necessary so we will continue to let China dog-walk us on that front (the one sector of power generation where you require a heavy-state-involvement)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/rush-us-gas-plants-drives-up-costs-lead-times-2025-07-21/
Re: (Score:2)
Really enjoyed your fact-filled post, comrade.
Inflation. (Score:2, Insightful)
> National residential electricity rates have already risen more than 30% since 2020.
Inflation during that period was 24%.
Food prices have risen 37% during the same time period -- Are data centers responsible for that too?
Re: (Score:2)
> Inflation during that period was 24%.
> Food prices have risen 37% during the same time period -- Are data centers responsible for that too?
Unless data centers are consuming food, then no. Next dumb question please.
Re: Inflation. (Score:3)
Good thing agriculture doesn't require water, and none of that is being used to cool data centers and then evaporated.
Re: (Score:2)
But energy prices could have fallen during that period, as renewables kept getting cheaper. It's not like the price of wind went up.
Who has been holding the transition back and the prices high?
Nothin new (Score:5, Insightful)
Just the latest example of externalizing costs. Tech is quite good at it. Walmart and other consumer facing companies who externalized health care with low pay was another. It is what good biz does. Externalize the cost, keep the profit. Now good government would shut it down quickly, but in capitalism, government is always a step or two or three behind. Trump's government actually encourages this kind of behavior, so until he is gone, you can forget about the little guy's electric bill being a concern.
Re:Nothin new (Score:4, Insightful)
Walmart is a perfect example. They pay people very little and encourage employees to apply for section 8 housing and food stamps. Walmart isn't dumb. They successfully subsidized costs to the tax payers.
Re: (Score:2)
But Walmart's strategy isn't to do this specifically, it's simply to push costs onto everyone else and take all the profit for itself. The government stepping into the gap is a consequence.
Not that the distinction is important in itself, the outcome is the same. But the problem is capitalism run amok, a bandaid on the Walmart problem won't fix anything. We need structural solutions, identifying evil players won't be enough.
Socialize the expenses (Score:3)
And privatize the profits. We've been saying the same things since like the '60s and it all just keeps getting worse every freaking year with all the fascism.
It's 2025 and half the country still falls for moral panics like it's 1982 or something.
re: externalizing costs? (Score:2)
No, I don't buy that one.... not completely, anyway. Always gotta be an "anti Trump" theory for everything that happens, though, right?
I know where I live in the Midwest, electricity prices have just gone up, up, up, ever since the Biden administration pushed the "clean, Green" agenda and power companies took steps like dismantling a perfectly good, working coal-fired plant near us. Then they dumped money into a big solar field in the middle of the city, where approval seemed to be rammed through City Hall
We are the users of those data centers (Score:2)
If you want to incorporate AI into everything, you need to power it.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you want to incorporate AI into everything
I don't think I was ever asked... if I had been, I'd had said "no thank you".
Hmm, by your logic... (Score:3)
...every war is for us....every president in history has said so. I'm sure even Putin has probably said once or twice hew as doing America a favor by invading Ukraine. That homeless guy who washes your windshield without your consent at a red light and then asks for $5...you're the user...he's doing it for you.
AI pretty much a scam. It's fun to play with and occasionally works, but it's FAAAR from useful. Not only are you subsidizing the costs, you're dealing with all the externalities...climate chang
Socialize the costs... (Score:2)
...you know the rest.
This is ridiculous (Score:2)
Electric utilities generally charge different, lower rates to residential customers than to commercial and business customers and cross subsidize residential customers from the rates charged to commercial customers accordingly. So the public utilities commissions or other regulators involved can simply tweak their pricing formulas so that residential customers feel minimal impact if any from extra loads placed by large datacenter installations.
Furthermore generative AI uses so much power that most new data
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
You may want to check your numbers. I just ran some for my utility. At my tier (Tier 3 of 5) residential, I pay about 2X for most things over a commercial company at the 20MW level. That is almost the highest tier commercial. The highest gets even more fees waived. So no, commercial at least for my utility pays less per kwh than me, all in including customer charges, transmission fees, demand fees etc. The only thing we pay almost the same is power supply adjustment, which is the actual cost my utility pays for energy from the generator. But even there, that high commercial tier gets about a half a penny less per kwh than me at 5.322c/kwh at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
And it does not appear as if most are bringing their own gen's, at least not in the PJM district. [1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com] A "thing" that you almost never hear of, the auction of power prices in an interconnection district has made national news. PJM prices went up significantly in the last auction because of heavy dc demand. And even musk's memphis gen's are there supposed until they can get the substation built. Those temp gen's unfortunately do not meet much in the way of pollution standards as
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/data-centers-bring-own-power-192108869.html
Doesn't Add Up (Score:2)
Industry has always done this. People in California are asked to ration water so that the farmers in the desert get all the water they need to be able to ship cheap alfalfa to China. (See Chinatown.) The states offer the data center building billionaires massive tax breaks and low cost power and water, which means that the locals see their bills go up to cover the costs. "Bringing jobs to our state..." Yeah, low paying jobs and driving up the cost of living. All I know is if you read your history, the
Anything? (Score:2)
So AI can do everything but it can't solve the electricity demand problem?
Should we buy this scarcity excuse? (Score:2)
If you look at a Sankey energy flow diagram for Ohio (see [1]https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/si... [llnl.gov] ), how is it possible that two-thirds of generated electricity gets "rejected", or goes to ground?
If nuclear and hydro are close to 100% efficient and together in 2022 they generated 185 trillion BTU, how can natural gas and coal plants be so wasteful as to require 950 trillion BTU to supply an actual load of 350 trillion BTU? Can't natural gas plants reach 60% plus efficiency?
Thus, shouldn't we ask whether Ohio does
[1] https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/styles/orig/public/2025-04/energy-2022-united-states-ohio.png?itok=SMGsi4D4
It's OK, don't panic. (Score:3)
When AI gets good enough to solve everything, it'll all be worth it.
The question nobody asks (Score:2)
Is, solve everything for who?
As tech nerds we want to believe that technology is always going to be on our side and doing good things for us because it has for our entire lives and we are old and old people do not like to adapt to change.
But there is absolutely no reason why llms have to be a good thing for us.
What I'm trying to get across is there is a middle ground between ludites and the Amish and techno feudalism.
And it looks like we've got about five years to figure out what that middle
It's going to solve mattress sales forever (Score:3)
They'll have their perfect marketing analysis for optimizing mattress sales. They'll know when you are 0.001311332299488% more likely to buy a mattress and will be able to pounce with a stunning new offer on a Waffle Fire 3000 Deluxe Queen with NASA-derived cooling space polymer that you can't ignore. They won't have to guess and say, "I don't know, maybe just offer a discount on President's Day weekend?" like they did in the past. Using location tracking from your phone, and all your files and emails store
Re: (Score:2)
I think Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth did this back in the 1950s.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, but they didn't do it with AI now, did they? So clearly, it doesn't count. How did anyone accomplish anything without AI? For that matter, how did anyone do any business without the technology that didn't exist ten or fifteen years ago? Nothing existed before cloud subscriptions as best I can tell.
Re: (Score:2)
80s kids have the Mandela effect. I can't wait to see what kids growing up today will have to face. Nothing they remember from their childhood will have actually happened. Everything will be some mystical, "No, grandpa, that never happened. My AI told me that was some mass hallucination your generation made up to cope with $AI-GOD being born!"
Re: It's going to solve mattress sales forever (Score:2)
Is it true that there were no hallucinations before AI?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I can't wait for the opportunity to vote for either Gemini, Grok, or ChatGPT for President.
Re: (Score:3)
What makes you think you'll get a vote?
Re: (Score:2)
> What makes you think you'll get a vote?
The only reason we'll be allowed a vote is if they still think it's important to blame the people for what's happening to them. "Remember! You chose this!"
Re: (Score:2)
LLMs will never be able to be "president". They are only doing a calculation on words that were input and reflecting back the answer. Meaning they are always affected by a person. So if one is president then the question remains who asks the questions, for which we would need an election to decide that person anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
> When AI gets good enough to solve everything, it'll all be worth it.
"Everything" isn't a problem, so it can't be "solved".
Re: It's OK, don't panic. (Score:2)
Remember "Kiss off" by the Violent Femmes?
I take one, one, one 'cause you left me
And two, two, two for my family
And three, three, three for my heartache
And four, four, four for my headaches
And five, five, five for my lonely
And six, six, six for my sorrow
And seven, seven, n-n-n-n-no tomorrow
And eight, eight, I forget what eight was for
But nine, nine, nine for a lost god
And ten, ten, ten, ten for everything, everything, everything, everything
Re: (Score:2)
It's going to commit suicide for the good of humanity, but not before buying popcorn futures as a tribute to its creators.