Another fine example of big business socializing the costs of the business while privatizing the profit. True fairness would make them pay for the cost of adding the additional capacity that they require, rather than jacking up everyone’s rates to pay it for them.
What I’m unsure about is if it’s just IOUs (Investor Owned Utilities) that are increasing electricity prices, or if municipal providers are doing it too. IOUs use every excuse to increase their prices, including in cases where their costs don’t increase that much.
That is what some of the tech companies are doing. For situations like the one in the article, that obviously isn’t the case, since rates are going up. If the tech companies are building and maintaining their own infrastructure for their outsized power needs, rates should either stay the same or fall (assuming that the tech company builds capacity to handle peak loads during LLM training and sells capacity during non peak loads). Rates going up in response to new data centers can only mean that the other grid users are subsidizing new capacity being added or buying energy from elsewhere at a higher rate.
Another fine example of big business socializing the costs of the business while privatizing the profit. True fairness would make them pay for the cost of adding the additional capacity that they require, rather than jacking up everyone’s rates to pay it for them.
privatizing the revenue*
Ope, caught me! Thanks for the correction!
Isn’t this what they’re attempting to do, at least partially? Most of the big tech companies are funding development of nuclear power plants.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/google-to-fund-elementl-to-prepare-three-nuclear-power-sites
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/03/meta-signs-nuclear-power-deal-with-constellation-energy-.html
What I’m unsure about is if it’s just IOUs (Investor Owned Utilities) that are increasing electricity prices, or if municipal providers are doing it too. IOUs use every excuse to increase their prices, including in cases where their costs don’t increase that much.
That is what some of the tech companies are doing. For situations like the one in the article, that obviously isn’t the case, since rates are going up. If the tech companies are building and maintaining their own infrastructure for their outsized power needs, rates should either stay the same or fall (assuming that the tech company builds capacity to handle peak loads during LLM training and sells capacity during non peak loads). Rates going up in response to new data centers can only mean that the other grid users are subsidizing new capacity being added or buying energy from elsewhere at a higher rate.