The major issue, at least in my neighborhood, is location more than anything else. We have a lot of industrially zoned areas that are great for data center location, and where they could be surrounded by other established industrial builds (think soda bottling plants, warehouses, transportation depos, semiconductor fabs, etc.) All the infrastructure is built out, electricity needs, etc. There is also a ton of land that exists that could be used for this purpose pretty distantly from town centers, if you can convince the gov/owners to part with it.
But despite this, the folks who want to expand data centers are instead trying to push instead into residential areas, or otherwise on land that would basically butt you up against pre-existing neighborhoods. Where I lack insight is if it's a matter of industrial property being too expensive compared to the swathes of otherwise unused land (at least that isn't used for state forests or whatnot,) or if there just literally is no room available for what they want to build out. But all the aspects of having bought your land to be in a residential area suddenly become way busy, value might go down because it's now in this weird quasi-industrial zone.
While there are legitimate concerns about the electricity/water usage, I (tinfoil hat) think that this is more of a game of influence/propaganda/state-level interest in an subject where it's easy to sow seeds of dissent. I personally think the electricity/water thing is a concern on a bigger scale than just individual utility bills, but it's blown out of proportion under that guise by conveniently cherry picking data from extreme examples. I also (more tinfoil) think that there's a lot of money changing hands since the AI boom is still growing and people are desperate to try to make a buck asap in any way possible, regardless of what may come tomorrow, so they're more willing to make a profit off of everything, but I have no legitimate proof of this.
In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations are just trying to dodge the embarrassing fact that people simply think data centers are draining municipal and natural water sources.
Monthly private spending on data center construction:
2015: $168 million
2024: $1.59 billion
10x increase over 9 years (26% annual growth rate)
2026: $4.36 billion
3x increase over 2 years (73% annual growth rate)
Let me reiterate: MONTHLY spending.
Compound this with presumably we've gotten better and not worse at building data centers (if nothing else, just building larger data centers would create economies of scale), the construction dollar to power consumption ratio has probably moved in the wrong direction for your argument.
The 2015 - 2024 growth curve would conceivably encourage more consistent usage of baseload and, where insufficient, gradual construction of additional supply. That would have the expected effect as seen in the paper.
The latter growth (which is obviously accelerating), especially after an extended period of the former growth, would not necessarily do this. We in fact know this to be true because the rate-limiting step on data center construction is lack of energy.
So obviously there is not ample excess baseload just sitting around. Obviously it's non-trivial to add additional capacity at the speed data centers need it.
Here's a recent source: https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-cente...
> How can higher demand lead to lower prices? … a bump in demand can allow for higher utilization of the existing generation … Provided the bump does not violate capacity constraints
I.e. data centers reduce electricity prices, as long as you don’t build new generation to support them. Whereas data centers, nationally are projected to increase energy use between 325 to 580 TWh annually by 2028 [1]. There is no way you are going to meet that without building new generation assets to meet that demand.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-releases-new-report-eval...
The study's authors acknowledge it in the text.
> We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach.
This is a good primer on capacity payments: https://www.energyknowledgebase.com/post/capacity-payment
"We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach."
But the data center backlash really started 2 years ago. It's 2026 now. Getting new energy generation built and approved takes time.
"We caution that future supply constraints could reverse the effect."
There it is.
it's my power bill, dude. and everyone else's around me. your paper stops measuring that data right at the time when everyone's bills started increasing sharply.
where I am the water is a part of it, but a big issue is electricity prices going up (which they will)
Is it any wonder people hear that and go "hmm, no thanks" when the prospect of a massive whirring data centre next to their house is raised?
The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology
The question should be, do you prefer to have them also built in the US or do you agree to have China (or another country) controlling AI in the future?
If AI is really gonna make everyone unemployable, then it seems to me like you would want them to be built in your country, not in another country, especially not one you disagree with.
Of course they're still the question of where exactly there are built and how to compensate for the nuisances they may bring.
I doubt that it's ignorance on their part. I think their target audience with those comments is the US government, basically setting up OpenAI/Anthropic as "too big to fail" in the sense that "if AI is _inevitably_ going to take away everyone's jobs, then we'd better make sure that it's US AI and not Chinese AI or some "rogue AI" that's doing it, and the government should 1) be in bed with us, 2) provide a financial backstop, and 3) not regulate us or put on the brakes so that we can stay ahead of the Chinese.
They don't care what the "normal" American thinks.
They're detached from the great unwashed masses. It's not that they don't know anything about human psychology. They don't care about those people or their concerns, historically. And that's what is coming out in this interfacing with the broader public.
Here in Switzerland new AI datacenters are also causing some uproar but a lot less because regulations are rigid enough in most places that you can only build them if you do so cleanly. You can't just take all the water, electricity, make noise and polute.
I live next to a waste valorisation plant and they have very over sized water cooling systems because they need to keep the noise below regulation. They also for example have under pressure in the trash receiving bunker to prevent smells from escaping. All regulations that cost money but are the benefit of all.
Yeah, Elon's a big fan of this tactic.
Why is that?
Where I live my energy bill is a fixed cost. It's a super expensive fixed cost, since I'm living in Germany, but it is fixed none the less. It increases year by year because all costs only go up, but it remains completely unaffected by unrelated infrastructure being built around where I live.
I've been to a data center before due to work and my impression of the place was really good. It's kinda invisible from the outside, everything is extremely clean. There's no noise on the outside and the excess heat is used to get people cheap warm water or something like that.
I'm quite confused why people suddenly hate on them. Feels like I'm missing a whole lot of context.
Infrastructure requires new capacity to be build, which requires capacity payments.
Then these big buyers go ahead and pay 50% of what everyone else is paying.
Also, I live in Northern Virginia where we have tons of data centers, and energy prices have not spiked.
That is now being consumed and now Loudon County will also start engaging in electricity price wars with data centers. New regulations to segregate markets is supposed to kick in on Jan 1 2027, in fact.
But also, it seems to have increased in price quite a bit lately.
I know that's what the rhetoric focuses on, but is it the real issue? The people I know personally who are against "data centers" are really just against AI, period. "It takes jobs from artists, it's going to take my job, it's going to enrich a handful of oligarchs," etc.
I suspect that even if some magical breakthrough meant that AI usage could grow and grow without building a single new data center, these guys would still oppose AI.
And understandably so! "I'm worried that AI will take my job" is a reasonable worry, for many jobs! But I feel like "data centers" is, for many people, a pretext.
* Externality costs for items like pollution
* Any required insurance cost during their lifetime (not subsidized)
* An up-front bond or similar to cover final decommissioning and any required long-term storage costs (again, for fossil/renewable/nuclear)
(Of course I might simply be projecting.)
I can almost guarantee there's a good bit of that also involved in addition to all the other concerns and issues folks also rightly have.
These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity. They're too electricity hungry to be supplied by the local grid, requiring megawatts to gigawatts of generation. If they're grid-connected at all (for training / inference racks + cooling) it is secondary supplementation.
There is a concerted effort by foreign governments to slow down American progress in fielding AI capability. Attempts to generate civil unrest and propaganda against $new_thing are included in this.
> These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity
And now you've got all the noise and pollution from that to deal with.
Also, adding a few data centers to a large grid shouldn’t bump up the energy prices, it’s only when you add many across the area. This is difficult to pin down because if one side of a region builds many data centers without their own power generation, the whole region could see eventual price increases. Fortunately most (all?) states regulate utility price increases, but still you don’t want to max out the price bump year after year.
It’s hard to discuss because different facilities have different configurations, and the local impact depends on that plus local characteristics.
Given the externalities of large facilities like this, impacted neighbors should definitely get a vote. Maybe we need a standard to define the impact radius based on the facility characteristics. This would add transparency and make it easier for people to decide without FUD and distortion. Unfortunately I don’t have much confidence in anyone coming up with such a standard without altering it to benefit their side, now that it’s become a political football.
S'okay. Facts and reality don't matter. Everything's peachy-keen, folks. Just wander on by and downvote reality and it'll magically go away... :sigh:
What about concerns about air pollution from unregulated diesel generators? Or using large amounts of water in drought prone areas?
I'm not a moron. I do know what I'm talking about most of the time.
99% is an interesting figure because that's roughly how much my energy bill has increased despite no significant change in my usage due to data center demand on the grid
Not if they get a sweetheart tax deal. Why do you think folks are so pissy? It’s like a sports stadium next to your house in that the principals get tax breaks, eminent domain, and other considerations, but it makes noise every day(not just weekends) and you don’t get to go to the game.
Regardless hopefully this restarts nuclear power generation
There are times when Silicon Valley looks out of touch and there are times when Silicon Valley just looks like idiots with hubris. This is more the later.
They know very little about the job market impact of AI, and are mostly retired so they don't care anyway.
For example, imagine you're worried about what goes on inside those DCs, are worried about the lack of accountability from Big Tech and would like to see sensible consumer-protection regulations. Can you express that anywhere? Sure, you can leave random comments somewhere, but that doesn't matter. OTOH, you can actually join a local NIMBY group and slow things down. It's not what you want, but it's better than nothing. Same goes for people worried about clean energy and other issues.
The only lever the government seems to have is tax breaks, and the only lever the people seem to have is NIMBYism. What a joke.
I haven't seen people really care and mobilize since maybe BLM?
But the sketchiest part of the bubble is when you directly bolt a no name data center company to Nvidia's cash pile, and you start turning cash into ever-lengthening receivables collection time, that's why people are skeptical of data centers: even if they can't tell a Google data center from a pivoting crypto bros data center, they smell the bullshit.
People also know they are being lied to, Oracle claims their New Mexico data center will run on Bloom fuel cells. I doubt Bloom is ready to scale to data center size without proof of concept in different applications at large if not directly comparable scale.
Lots of these commentaries miss the following: - noise and uncomfortable vibrations making nearby habitual living challenging - rises costs of power and water - more traffic and disruption to traveling patterns
The first is a big deal. These companies have a history of refusing to address noise and disruptions to neighbors personal health. They simply don’t care because they only care about the money. Its greed at an immense level. Until you’re ready to accept you would be comfortable with a data center as your neighbor you have 0 skin in making decisions for others who do.
And the rich bourgeoisie people who are so misguided about this: mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary famous shark tank billionaires, who claim “you’re experiencing Chinese propaganda about data centers” and probably even anyone on these forums who makes a strong claim without experience, would never ever accept living next to a data center. They are sideline commentators and should take responsibility for the harms to local people.
1. Lawmakers literally do not care what you think (study from Princeton) [1];
2. Private utilities are more expensive than public utilities [2]; and
3. Nobody goes to war over a solar panel [3].
All of this is relevant here.
The privatization of utilities has shown to be a massive mistake, in part based on debunked economics (ie the tragedy of the commons). Demand is very inelastic so they have to be highly regulated. The electricity price is set by lawmakers so how do they make profits? By building more infrastructure because that cost can be passed on to consumers.
So if a hyperscalar needs 6GW of power, you need to build massive transmission lines and power plants. That's great for private utility profits. And that's what we're all paying for. The DCs are usually getting subsidized electricity as well as not paying for the extra infrastructure.
So many things would be better if we'd had mass adoption of renewable power but that's bad for the wealthy. You install a solar panel and it just generates electricity every year. It can be built incrementally and quickly. It also tends to utilize land that is of little value otherwise, such as in the Southwest US. But fossil fuels make people wealthy. An oil or natural gas well declines in production over time. That means you have to keep building them. That's more profit.
This whole saga is revealing to a lot of people just how little lawmakers care about the voters. They'll ignore protests and vote anyway. They'll do it in secret. If they get voted out, who cares? They'll magically find their way into jobs for these companies.
[1]: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
[2]: https://energyandpolicy.org/utility-profit-report/
[3]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
I HATE that this is somehow becoming a culture war issue.
These companies have a lot of money behind them - if they're not willing to put in the effort to convince local residents that the data center will be good for them, I feel like that's on them. They could easily do some handouts and fix this. Offer to pay extra taxes to the state or whatever, fund a new power plant, pay everyone who lives nearby the DC some thousands of dollars, whatever.
But have they disproportionately amplified them? I follow some energy experts, and the consensus for AI-focused mega-datacenters seems to be "no". Some interesting reports:
• Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI's Environmental and Human Effects - https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107172
• FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission): "…approximately half of this [$5.1 billion] cost will be borne by customers…" - https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/commissioner-clements-...
• Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Processing Power: The Effect of Data Centers on Wholesale Electricity Markets - https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/...
If people were just honest with their objections, then we could be unified, but currently we're fighting misinformation that are trying to stop 5MW computer closets and projects that are trying to be a drop in replacement for a _steel mill_ (which should be an automatic approval)
And what exactly is the benefit to you to having a data centre specifically in the area you live? Seems to me that far from “irrational hordes”, the protestors are standing up for their interests above the interests of the AI companies.
You won't get approval if whatever you want to build would impact things that way, meaning before you can build or even expand something like a data center you have to make sure the capacity is there or pay yourself to build it or pay to get a direct line from outside the city. Either way, other people won't need to pay more because of it.
> A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee.
> xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.
In fact, the majority of people cite the data centers as (1) "AI slop machines", (2) a bubble that will burst leaving a data center behind or (3) surveillance factories. Very few think they will produce useful output. This is completely at odds with the idea they will displace the job market.
And the effects of Iran War are not apparent.
I would recommend reading the actual paper where it acknowledges that it does not regard capacity payments.
I am saying the paper's scope of analysis (up to 2024) renders it pretty much irrelevant.
The paper was posted on the 18th of June. I would guess that means they started writing the first draft in the winter of 2026, if not earlier. 2026 data obviously wouldn't be available then, or even now---we're only in September!
In fact, most data products take a few months to compile and distribute. The US will release its Q2 estimate of GDP at the end of September, for example; Statistics Canada is on a pretty similar schedule. Thus, 2025 data might not have been available when they started writing either. It's certainly possible to estimate things on your own, but now you need to show that a) your method of estimating GDP (energy prices, whatever) is valid and b) any effects you see aren't simply due to using different metrics.
In short, it just takes a while to do and write up research.
The outside agitators are in the news. The U.S. just happens to be a little more vulnerable to "straight to the people" propaganda campaigns.
so the issue isn't about data centers at all, but the fact that we've decided to stop enforcing even minimal environmental standards.
water consumption is another one, we just haven't done a very good of realizing that its a limited resource and trying to manage it.
the other is raising electrical rates. it should just be a real problem to raise rates to pay for Capex for other non-residential customers.
those are all real issues. 'people are going to get screwed' is a culture war thing, particularly if their opinion seems to be against environmental regulation as a matter of course. if a data center isn't noisy and polluting, and doesn't impact water or electrical consumption, then there is no sane reason to be against it. there are data centers that use close loop cooling. there are those that don't effect your rates. there are ones that are not really close to residences.
... I'm not sure you realize the size of a modern hyperscale datacenter? They're pretty dang big.
The amount of earthmoving to bury one would also be awful for the environment. There's really no need to complicate it that much, they're big warehouses full of computers, just shove them on some unused industrial land somewhere as is already being done.
They should be required to pay for new renewable generation, I agree. That much is common sense.
2. Nuclear Safety Commission Chairman Haruki Madarame told a parliamentary inquiry that "Japan's atomic safety rules are inferior to global standards and left the country unprepared for the Fukushima nuclear disaster". There were flaws in, and lax enforcement of, the safety rules governing Japanese nuclear power companies. [4 (Bloomberg: "Nuclear Safety Chief Says Lax Rules Led to Fukushima Crisis")]
3. Additionally, your source is from more than 5 years ago; in those additional >5 years, neither of the 2 under-construction Japan plants (started in 2006 and 2010) have finished, and 1 is not expected until 2030 (I couldn't find an expected date for the other).
4. The phase you mentioned is a relatively small amount (~1/3) of a nuclear reactor's total startup timeline. [6]
5. Japan was the fastest country from your 2021 source (before taking into account that current JP builds are taking 20+ years).
6. The last Japan reactor to go online was in the 2000s [1 > OPERATION].
[1] https://cnpp.iaea.org/public/countries/JP/profile/preview
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant
[3] https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862
[4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-16/nuclear-s...
[5] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...
Currently, economy of Japan (world biggest LNG importer) is hit hard by the events in Middle East. Because of this goverment starts maximum use of nuclear power policy.
https://www.nucnet.org/news/japan-council-adopts-policy-pack...
https://www.powermag.com/reactor-restart-rekindling-japans-n...
https://ieefa.org/resources/japans-diversified-lng-procureme...
tbh I'm more worried about the resource curse from the sudden change in budget
The problem, from the cases I have looked at, seems to be that towns want to do dumb shit with this money rather than just cut residents a tax break.
Unless local governments are getting bribed en masse, literally no municipality would want a datacenter if there wasn't a net benefit. I checked in my area and the datacenters are receiving tax breaks, but they also have to pay into the local school districts and fund the energy infrastructure buildout. Just because tax breaks are part of the deal doesn't mean there isn't a net benefit for the community.
Just uninformed, are they? To some extent, perhaps they are. OTOH, tech bros aren’t helping any, with Musk’s Memphis DC being the poster child for why you don’t want a DC in your town. They’ll come to your town, make a bunch of noise and pollution, and dare you to enforce the law. “Can’t happen here”? It’s already happened elsewhere.
No one is actually informed on the details, it's all just become a meme at this point.
Perhaps the principals should be more forthcoming about these deals, rather than springing them on the public after the deal is done, then everyone can be well-informed. As it is, such things have been decided in non-public meetings in enough places to cause some skepticism.
Three Mile Island
"2027 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether to issue operating license to Constellation Energy, with the decision expected in May. If granted, Constellation expects to bring the reactor back online later in the year."
https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-re...
Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-...
Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partn...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Res...
> Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront.
No it's like demanding your new neighbors aren't forced to lend you money for your purchase - which is entirely reasonable. If you need money, get it from the bank.
The top-level comment explains it already:
"When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution."
Is the idea that we'd build the data centers now, and finish the nuclear plants to power them 11-12 years from now?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...
https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-t...
Though we really should get better at building nuclear power plants. I'm think more of small ones to power ships though, not land based ones. Ships are one of the few places where oil/coal are used that there are not realistic renewable alternatives.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
No it can't. Regulation is already being flouted.
> Banning them outright is the equivalent of banning all immigration
Please be less obvious, this is just insulting.
So regulations to ban datacenters work, but for some reason regulations to ban gas turbines or whatever doesn't work?
>Please be less obvious, this is just insulting.
Please be less obvious. You failing to rebut my argument and resorting to calling it "just insulting" is insulting.
A commenter below quotes a 73% annual growth rate vs. 23% over the prior decade.
You don't think that'd have an effect on people's perception?
Yes, as we see here.
> regulations to ban gas turbines or whatever doesn't work?
Yes, as we've seen elsewhere.
Anything else you're not clear on?
That's still better than 11-12 years. How long does a solar farm take?
If residents' opposition is rooted in higher power prices, data centers could just pay extra instead until the new capacity comes online. Seems like a cheap way to pay off opposition.
> An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years.
Given this article is about Pennsylvania, it'll probably take millions of years.
24–48 months, but for a data center that has to run 24/7 you need to also build a gas power plant.
https://www.pvfarm.io/blog/utility-scale-solar-project-devel...
https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/betting-big-data-ce...
Also residential and industrial use will be lower at night. So the existing grid supply may also be enough.
* The longest piece for wind is "Approvals and permits" which takes up to 5 years of the 4-7y.
* The building part "takes approximately 3-6 months" for building wind.
So wind can be built far faster if we're willing to speed up approvals and permitting. And even if corners are cut for approvals/permitting, the worst case for a wind turbine failure is a lot better than a nuclear failure.
Start paying closer attention to the news and make note of when facts are cherry picked to suit sentiment… and then ask yourself where the origin of the sentiment is.
Farms use an order of magnitude more than either. You don’t see any demands whatsoever on agriculture to reduce water usage.
The difference is they already exist while the datacenters don't. And its a lot easier, in a democracy, to stop a thing from being built in the first place than to tear it down after the fact, what with pesky laws about private property and so forth.
Or are you really saying that if we can't solve all water usage problems then we shouldn't solve or prevent any? Is that what you're suggesting?
Instead of replying to your rather silly question I’ll just point to this sibling which I’ll co-sign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568295
That's just status quo bias, given that they're an ongoing source of water consumption. "oh it doesn't matter that [thing] is guzzling water, because it's already there!".
Amazon was forced to settle for 20 million which will pay for digging to find uncontaminated water sources deeper in the ground. They'll also pay for water treatments to help remove the excess nitrates.
Data centers don't have to bring in new toxins and pollutants. They can also make existing problems much much worse.
That's all it takes for them to do their part in generating gargantuan amounts of value for people who live 1,000 miles away and their uberwealthy hardly-human CEOs and investors.
One recent-ish example: ^[1]
> ... or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices?
I believe their contractor was responsible for this one IIRC?
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2026/07/09/meta...
1. Replacing forests and fields with concrete buildings prevents rainwater from filtering into the soil, which stops local aquifers from recharging.
2. During storms the rain runs off impervious surfaces and can cause downstream flooding.
3. Heavy land grading washes loose sediment into nearby waterways, destroying aquatic habitats and turning private drinking wells muddy. (That especially gets local homeowners angry and gets lots of video views).
And then you have the ongoing operation of open cooling systems:
4. Evaporative cooling systems discharge concentrated mineral brine that spikes the salinity of freshwater ecosystems.
5. Cooling water is treated with toxic biocides and anti-scalants that can contaminate local water basins. It can also contain leached copper, zinc, and PFAS.
6. Discharging warm wastewater depletes oxygen in streams and alters the overall ecology.
Of course all of these issues could be mitigated to a reasonable degree with proper care and effort:
>this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly
Do you want to bet your whole town on things being done properly right now?
Items 4 and 5 apply to any facility with cooling towers, not limited to but including hospitals, apartment buildings, schools, prisons, cold storage warehouses, combined cycle power plants, large commercial buildings, paper plants, retirement homes, commercial bakeries, industrial facilities with heat rejection needs, etc.
The sixth one applies to virtually every power plant in existence.
The first 3 apply to all construction. It's just being selectively applied because people hate datacenters.
For private wells: if you're a rural person who previously had perfectly fine water, and now someone comes along to mess with that, even if it "just" requires installing expensive new equipment, you're going to be pissed.
I don't doubt that politics plays a role, but we also can't deny that the current moment is a different category.
The famous evening duck curve, when people go home and cook and turn on heating/cooling appliances. California is able to flatten that out with batteries alone.
https://eticaag.com/battery-storage-and-the-duck-curve-march...
> during night
When everyone's asleep? Serious doubt, please show your sources.
Lot of industry, especialy heavy industry, chemical plants are running 24/7.
For expensive night prices see electricity prices in Europe, expensive natural gas, coal power production with carbom tax.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...
Perhaps I just struck a nerve.
This whole thing is a sublimation of vaguer anxieties about AI (which are perfectly rational!) into areas where people feel like they can make more concrete objections that are likelier to succeed. The water thing is completely fake, whether people think so or not.
Which is being demonstrated by the use of state power to kill data center development.
Right...so they also run during the day (that's what 24/7 means), when everyone else is using electricity. At night they're the only users. Which means less demand at night compared to the day.
> see electricity prices in Europe
This article is about Pennsylvania. That isn't in Europe.
You are right, PJM grid is coal, nuclear and gas dominated.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-MIDA-PJM/live/fi...
I think it’s pretty reasonable to conclude that their beef is not really with water usage as much as a general hatred of AI, big tech, etc, and water usage is an easy thing to focus on.