I live in a red state; my electricity bill went up 40% (flat rate annual billing), but my consumption only went up 10%. Local newspaper reports that this is because of data centers.
I typically don't vote for Republicans, and I typically do vote for environmental protection. However, my state is heavily gerrymandered by the Republican supermajority here.
So, I don't really have a choice.
Also, go fuck yourself for being so glib about an entire state's population and wishing them ill.
It was an awful comment and I've detached the subthread and warned them. But you can't comment like this on HN, no matter who or what you're replying to.
Go ahead and ban me if you like, but if someone says I deserve a consequence by virtue of the political stance of unrelated people within the same political boundaries as I, then I am going to tell them to go fuck themselves.
It is in the spirit of the site that I actually made an argument before doing so.
Had I not been so raw in my response to the poster, garnering flags and downvotes, I doubt that they would even have been addressed at all.
I wasn’t even considering banning you, and I agree it’s awful to wish harm on people like that.
But this site can only work if we have guidelines and uphold them evenly, and it only makes it harder to help and defend you if you act with contempt towards us and the guidelines.
> Had I not been so raw in my response to the poster, garnering flags and downvotes, I doubt that they would even have been addressed at all.
This is false, and offensive. We work hard to make this a place where everyone can express their point of view and where people are not vilified for having different points of view. We would absolutely ban someone who demonstrated a pattern of initiating such attacks on you.
The right way to deal with such attacks is to flag them and to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) to alert us to the attack, and we will always take action.
The real question is "why do rates go up with a data center?"
That answer is interesting. Its cause in most states, if a company formally requests a power hookup, the power company MUST comply. Thus entails in upgrading substations, transformers, supply lines, etc. And all those upgrades are borne by the citizens in that region.
That's why you bill goes up, cause datacenter upgrades dump on the public their externalities.
In some states like Indiana, the governor is already talking about changing that law requiring data centers to pay for upgrades.
The rules shouldn't be specific to datacenters though; mechanics like Pennsylvania's "but-for" cost allocation make sense globally. If a new smelting plant requires upgrades to a substation, which wouldn't otherwise be necessary, the smelting plant should be charged accordingly.
If you want fiber connected to your building you have to pay for the infra to be upgraded. Passing on the cost to other people does not have to happen (unless there is a law).
Every place I'm familiar with has demand charges on large-scale users that is supposed to pay for that equipment.
The real problem is boomers have stopped allowing things to be built efficiently, so supply is limited, had been limited for decades, and demand still grows, so prices spike disproportionally with demand increases.
Additionally we subsidize wind and solar heavily, but the fixed costs of large plants don't drop, so we end up spending for our power twice and for natural gas plants to replace coal, because that's the only solution we will do to keep power during the winter in Northern states.
Grid upgrades would have to happen no matter what. Data centers are just the catalyst and boogeyman at the moment.
This utopia that everyone has about electric cars will never come to fruition without grid upgrades.
This country has systematically underinvested and underdeveloped the electric grid for 50 years and now we are paying the price. It is a government failing.
They should not; however, why should others who did not vote for Republicans suffer their fate? Merely because they live in the same political boundary? Get real.
I typically don't vote for Republicans, and I typically do vote for environmental protection. However, my state is heavily gerrymandered by the Republican supermajority here.
So, I don't really have a choice.
Also, go fuck yourself for being so glib about an entire state's population and wishing them ill.