“In 2022, PJM stopped processing new applications for power plant connections after it was overloaded with more than 2,000 requests from renewable power projects, each of which required engineering studies before they could connect to the grid”
As a result, grid operators and lawmakers in the west have collectively forgotten how to deal with rapid growth of electricity demand.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/383650/consumption-of-el...
Why do we stall human progress and not get started on this end state tech yesterday? It is the key to a functioning singularity.
And the kicker? It’s easy. We already have all necessary parts available off shelf. And it’s green, ain’t no pollution like space pollution.
Total electric production is stagnant over the same period https://www.iea.org/countries/united-states/electricity
If you want to grow value in an economy, how do you do it without growing energy supply and reducing energy cost? Intensive growth (the economist's answer to infinite growth on a finite planet) can only do so much for an economy as we continually add more valuable things to spend energy inputs on.
Ultimately the process of taking an input and making it more valuable is an application of energy.
The area of solar panels needed to power data centers is .. maybe 100x the area of the data center?
Only a tiny percentage of the USA is covered by data centers. Maybe 100 million square meters? That would be something like 0.001%.
Then covering 0.1% of the USA with solar panels could power all data centers.
davidw•3h ago
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/oregon-data-centers-c...
dehrmann•2h ago
[citation needed]
The article did go on...
> According to Oregon CUB, large industrial users, like data centers, that have connected to Portland General Electric’s system pay about 8 cents per kilowatt hour, or kWH, which is the unit of energy used when 1,000 watts of power is used in an hour. Residential customers in the same PGE system pay close to 20 cents per kilowatt hour
But that's a disingenuous comparison. Data centers are cheaper to serve because there's ~one massive line going to one place, power use is generally more fixed and predictable, and they might be paying less because they can reduce power use during heat waves.
davidw•2h ago
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/08/26/fast-growing-energy-d...
gusgus01•2h ago
Retric•2h ago
Most of the distribution costs occur on the other side of a substation due to efficiency losses with long distance transmission etc. A data center located next to a power plant has some advantages, but still needs power when that power plant is offline.
kolinko•1h ago
In Poland/EU during summer we have electricity surplus, not deficit.
littlestymaar•2m ago
roenxi•2h ago
This is just restricting industry because they don't want to build the infrastructure to support it. Which, fair enough. At this point the fight about industrialising vs de-industrialising has been fought out. But exactly why there is this big round of chip sanctions on China when the US doesn't want to build the power plants to use them domestically will quickly become a baffler. China can build coal plants at a rate of 2/week, plus solar panels, nuclear plants and what have you. I bet they're willing to run all these data centres.
readthenotes1•2h ago
Of course that means that they have a perverse incentive to increase them as much as possible and tell then
mcintyre1994•1h ago
rightbyte•20m ago
I don't see why residents in Oregon would like to compete with big tech dollars for utility services. It is a losing endouver when you are far from the printing presses.
So I guess "fair" is adjusted for access to capital?
palmfacehn•2h ago
Ultimately, the previous pricing tiers seem to have been determined by political means. This presents a contradiction for proponents of "fair share" pricing. If the previous political process resulted in an "unfair" outcome, then why is the new politically determined outcome "more fair"? What does "fair share" really mean here? Wouldn't the previous outcome suggest that the political process has issues with creating "fair" outcomes?
I get the impression that Oregon Public Broadcasting would dismiss or even demonize market based metrics as "unfair". There also seems to be a vague sense that tech bros and cryptocurrency users have become class enemies for some political persuasions.