This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I just don’t understand why this is a difficult question. Make the data centers fund their own power needs. End of story.
As pointed out in the article, because datacenters are pretty fast to build, new power plants need to start construction roughly 1 year before the datacenter starts construction. But that leaves the utilities with alle the risk, unless a robust agreement is in place with the datacenter. What happens if several power plants start construction, but the AI bubbles bursts, and the datacenters are cancelled?
Then we get the actual capacity we need at the prices we can afford. Our power grid is disappointing. All that “extra capacity” could stop the random brown outs, rate spikes, and provide some extra capacity for the future.
Oh no! A struggling utility! I wonder where excess money is flowing? What could possibly fund these upgrades? -[insert generalized doom & gloom] -
https://energyandpolicy.org/as-customers-struggled-utility-ceos-pay-spiked-last-year/
