Post #290219

2024-11-27 00:38 UTC

Dominion Power claims that Virginians’ power usage keeps climbing, so they need to build new power plants that we’ll all pay for with rate hikes. Forced to release internal records, it turns out that the only increase is coming from building data centers. Why should Virginians subsidize Amazon, whose budget is 7x Virginia’s? https://virginiamercury.com/2024/11/26/under-pressure-from-the-scc-dominion-reveals-the-true-cost-of-data-centers/

Replies (17)

@sobkas@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 01:16

@waldoj@mastodon.social It's either increased capacity or Jeff Bezos will be walking door to door killing every person., until capacity will be high enough to support his datacenters.

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@clintruin@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 01:28

@waldoj@mastodon.social And now with Musk pushing for deep de-regulation... Good thing America voted for Trump. He'll be awesome for the average Joe! #doomed

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@sfrazer434@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 02:14

@waldoj@mastodon.social if I understand this correctly, Dominion is only allowed to make 9.7% profit on actually selling energy, but there’s no cap on profit from building new plants? If that’s right the answer is obvious: profit. 🫤

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@ronaldchennault@masto.ai 2024-11-27 02:23

@waldoj@mastodon.social Thanks for this. Similar story here in Illinois: https://www.wbez.org/money/2024/11/23/comed-electric-bills-quantum-computing-data-centers-ai-pritzker-pjm-cub

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@gtucker5@mastodon.acm.org 2024-11-27 02:52

@waldoj@mastodon.social I'm unconvinced. If 1M citizens were to migrate to the state, would you expect the new residents to bear all the costs of new capacity in cash that should be amortized over 30-50 years? Of course not. the capacity becomes an asset of the state that contributes to future economic activity.

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@susiemagoo@mstdn.social 2024-11-27 03:06

@waldoj@mastodon.social Just say no. Tell them Reagan told you to.

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@Canevecchio@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 03:57

@waldoj@mastodon.social @dgoldsmith@mastodon.social You’ve heard of capitalism, right? (Sorry, that wasn’t really aimed at you or at your rhetorical question. I’m just tired of the accellerating enshittification of just about everything that I once thought might lead to progress, and I’m afraid we won’t have enough lampposts, enough rope, enough courage, or enough judgment to make it all come right in the end.)

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@toxtethogrady@universeodon.com 2024-11-27 04:27

@waldoj@mastodon.social That's true all over the country. Make Amazon pay disproportionately if they're going to use a disproportionate portion of the power supply...

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@shuttersparks@qoto.org 2024-11-27 05:23

@waldoj@mastodon.social Exactly. For some reason, data centers, for years, have chosen to locate themselves in VA and MD. This seems odd. If I were going to build a data center I'd look carefully at places like Montana and North Dakota. I don't understand the decision-making here.

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@shuttersparks@qoto.org 2024-11-27 05:25

@waldoj@mastodon.social Also, I live in Dominion's region and my electric rates have been going up, up, up. What's more, wind and solar are not a thing around here, yet. Why?

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@atmur01@darmstadt.social 2024-11-27 05:56

@waldoj@mastodon.social We need to force these data centers to be self-sufficient - i.e. be plastered with solar panels and have battery banks. And none of that should be charged to home-based ratepayers. We have the same problem in California, along with a governor who is in thick with the private electric utilities.

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@speedysmart@social.vivaldi.net 2024-11-27 09:04

@waldoj@mastodon.social Surely this is what investors are for - they will see the returns on investment, not the consumer? It should reduce the cost to consumers with scaled-up generation?

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@lispi314@udongein.xyz 2024-11-27 11:46

@waldoj@mastodon.social @dalias@hachyderm.io Amazon should pay for the datacenters nearly or indeed in full. They should be glad to contribute to society for once, instead of merely profiting off feeding on it.

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@jerrydgj@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 13:31

@waldoj@mastodon.social Another way for Republicans to subsidize the wealthy.

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@lymphomation@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 14:26

@waldoj@mastodon.social Americans elected a sexual predator and *convicted fraud.* In America deals like this will be the norm.

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@pg1958@mastodon.sdf.org 2024-11-27 16:04

@waldoj@mastodon.social I wonder if any of these data centers are involved in mining crypto given America is responsible for 38% of the world's mining. I doubt the people benefitting from all that expensive mining are the ones paying for it.

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@SaftyKuma@mastodon.social 2024-11-27 23:35

@waldoj@mastodon.social It isn't just VA. Rates are going up across the country to subsidize the tech bros.

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