But the vast majority of my $500+ a month PG&E bill is for transmission, not generation.
taeric · 1h ago
500 a month sounds steep. I'm assuming you live somewhere that requires AC every day?
The article referred to driving prices up from 2020 due to making the infrastructure stronger by as much as 30%. Which, yeah, about 150ish of your bill.
It is less clear on how much it will need to go up because of increased demand? The prediction is 8%. Which, again, not nothing. But it is telling that there is more increase from infrastructure than there is generation? I don't know that that will change?
prasadjoglekar · 1h ago
And according TFA, those poles and wires for transmission are a large part of the increase in costs that are forecasted.
Ideally, the folks who request the new plants and transmission lines pay for them, but it appears tech cos are attempting to pass the transmission cost burden onto residential consumers.
teeray · 1h ago
Privatize the gains, publicize the losses
hammock · 40m ago
You can thank all the wildfires for that
Avicebron · 28m ago
Yeah...I hate when wildfires neglect their infrastructure to the point that they start themselves
grafmax · 2h ago
Not just bills. These data centers, a major driver of new energy use, are contributing to climate change. Sadly it seems to be another way for large companies to offload externalities onto the public.
rambojohnson · 1h ago
To say nothing of the exorbitant amount of water used to cool these machines, we’re on track to face a water shortage crisis long before any other climate change impact.
arghwhat · 1h ago
Water availability is a regional climate change impact, which does not apply everywhere due to differences in water sourcing and weather patterns and how climate change affects these.
It's very stupid to evaporate potable water on purpose in dry regions, but note that many numbers in this area are highly sensationalized by taking e.g. the maximum design capacity of the cooling system instead of the actual load, and that there are several other cooling solutions. Most proper facts die tragic deaths before they make it to mainstream news media. :/
kolinko · 1h ago
Are they? IIRC MS & Google were running on carbon neutral sources.
rambojohnson · 1h ago
Carbon neutrality doesn’t refill a drained reservoir used to cool off these machines. Running your servers on wind power doesn’t make the millions of gallons they’re dumping into cooling systems any less gone.
arghwhat · 1h ago
The water cycle refills drained reservoirs - the "carbon cycle" is not one we want to be part of.
Also note that there's other cooling solutions than evaporative cooling, such as closed loop water cooling with chillers, cooling with sea water, using heat pumps to redirect the heat to district heating loops (making use of the heat!), just building in colder places requiring less cooling, etc.
cma · 46m ago
Google stopped claiming "operational carbon neutrality" shortly after the release of chatgpt.
The article referred to driving prices up from 2020 due to making the infrastructure stronger by as much as 30%. Which, yeah, about 150ish of your bill.
It is less clear on how much it will need to go up because of increased demand? The prediction is 8%. Which, again, not nothing. But it is telling that there is more increase from infrastructure than there is generation? I don't know that that will change?
Ideally, the folks who request the new plants and transmission lines pay for them, but it appears tech cos are attempting to pass the transmission cost burden onto residential consumers.
It's very stupid to evaporate potable water on purpose in dry regions, but note that many numbers in this area are highly sensationalized by taking e.g. the maximum design capacity of the cooling system instead of the actual load, and that there are several other cooling solutions. Most proper facts die tragic deaths before they make it to mainstream news media. :/
Also note that there's other cooling solutions than evaporative cooling, such as closed loop water cooling with chillers, cooling with sea water, using heat pumps to redirect the heat to district heating loops (making use of the heat!), just building in colder places requiring less cooling, etc.
> In the coming years, artificial intelligence could turbocharge those increases
the cost of residential power is going up because of the shift away from natural gas towards solar
failing to admit this or worse lying about it is not going to actually help long term