I live in NJ, USA. I thought I had missed a payment when my last electric bill came. Nope, just a huge rate hike. about the same amount of electricity as the prior year, double the bill.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
805 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
79236 readers
2592 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Were you recently told your bill is gonna go up again when they put in that massive data center in a year or so? We were told. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ no option to say "fuck you, make them pay their bills." Nope. PSE&g was like "brace for it bitch." And that was it.
I probably was. But I also just delete all their emails. They're the only energy distributer in my area. Even if I contracted with someone else I'd have to pay their increased distribution rates.
Yeah same here. Just bullshit that they're like "this is happening. Pay us more"
PSE&G told some coworkers of mine their bill would go up by “as much as 20%” shortly before they went up by 150%. One of them got a bill for $800 for their two bedroom apartment
These taxes collected from tariffs have to go somewhere
Europeans: "first time?"
My electricity costs must have tripled since the Ukraine war, not like they were low before...
Where are you located? In Germany it spiked but now I'm paying less than before the war (25 vs 27 cents).
Italy.
As a "European" my electricity bill has never been as low as it is this year. I think it really depends where you live
This is going to feel like the recycle scam isn't it. Corpos sucking down every last drop of energy while residential will be asked to turn up the thermostat in the summer and down in the winter so we "do our part".
Always has been
Residents in big cities have been experiencing it for decades at this point.
ConEd saying "We're preparing for the heat wave in your area this week. Please, limit your energy usage to prevent power outages."
Yeah, and times square is still lit up full brightness. The skyscraper offices aren't doing their part. Most of them, you can feel the cold on the street from their lobbies.
Charge higher rates for crypto and AI. No one should be hot or cold so some asshole can make more money.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This has been the case for decades, why would it change now?
It will be even worse than before. Texas hasn't added any power generating capacity outside of the devil that is solar and wind. Solar and wind are the only reasons we haven't seen the rolling blackouts for a few years now. Texas is even trying to make it harder to add more solar and wind, so it will strain even more.
literally passing the bucks to us: https://apnews.com/article/electricity-prices-data-centers-artificial-intelligence-fbf213a915fb574a4f3e5baaa7041c3a
I always ignore power savings requests. If they really can't serve the population, they need to make more power. If we all turn down our usage to make it work, they won't make more.
crypto scam, AI is the new crypto
And all we get in return are chat systems that make up bullshit facts. I mean, I don't disagree that they can actually do some useful stuff, too. But the proportion of the public that benefits from them in any meaningful way is tiny compared to the cost to the rest of us. I hope a tornado lands on Elon's gas-powered monstrosity in, where, Tennessee, I think? Destroy that shit, please.
load more comments
(13 replies)
Don’t let the tech bros into your state.
Why isn't the roof of that facility covered with solar panels? It might not provide all the juice they need, but it will offset some. Future facilities like this should be forced to install some sort of energy mitigation strategy before getting approval.
Of course it should be covered in solar panels but so should most roofs everywhere but this single roof would be less than a drop in the bucket.
A square meter solar panel gives you about 100 watts while the sun is at it's highest point, and only when aimed directly at the sun. Typically over the entire day, the average will be a fraction of that
Meanwhile these servers use multiple CPUs that each take around 200 watts. A single server can take between 1-5 kilowatt in power. A single rack than carry dozens of those server's, so you see that you'd need way, waaaayyy more solar panels to make up for all of that
Again, not saying they shouldn't. All buildings should have solar panel roofs, but for this one building it won't do much to the point that the difference would be a blip
I get it, but you make them all do it anyway, just on principle, if nothing else.
Best we can do is diesel generators 😔
load more comments
(1 replies)
You're right about the general idea, but I think you're even underestimating the scale here.
I don't think these servers will be doing much on CPU, they'll be on GPUs. HPE will sell you a 48 rack unit behemoth with 36 Blackwell GB200s for a total of 72 GPUs and 36 CPUs. The CPUs are actually negligible here, but each of the 36 units use a total of 2700 watts (single GPU itself is supposedly 1200 watts so that would make the CPU 300 watts?)
36 * 2.7 = 97.2 kilowatts. You put just a hundred of these in a data center and you're talking over 10 megawatts once cooling and everything is factored in. So this is what, 100k m^2 of solar panels for 100 racks?
You'd want them to be running most of the time too, idle hardware is just a depreciating asset. Say they run 75% of the time. 0.75 * 10 * 24 * 365 = 65700 MWh which I will not even convert to gigawatt hours to simplify this: The average American household uses about ~11 MWh of electrical energy per year. A single AI-focused data center without even all that many racks uses as much power as ~6000 households. They're building them all over the country, and in reality I think they're actually way bigger than what I mentioned. It's putting a significant dent in the power grid, to the point AI companies should be required to commission nuclear power plants before being allowed to build their data centers.
When’s the last time you looked into this?
I just went fully off grid and I have a relatively large house and workshop.
The panels I used, which are great but aren’t the absolute best on the market come out to about 231W per sq. meter.
I have a 39kW system installed just for my house. It’s overkill, yeah but I plan for the future (telling the regional power monopoly to go fuck themselves for the next 30 years).
Covering one of these centers with solar would absolutely make a huge impact. Not only by providing power during the day but also with keeping the building cooler.
For reference, the panels I have (65 of), coupled with 100kWh battery bank.
https://www.runergy.com/wp-content/uploads/download/DH156N8-30F.pdf
Even at over double the other guys estimate on power per area, it isn't even touching the requirements of major data centres. What it takes to run a normal house is tiny, they likely have servers that individually draw more power than my entire household, and they have hundreds if not thousands of these servers.
Do it anyway because solar is the closest thing to free power we have, but it isn't gonna cover the building.
load more comments
(1 replies)
A square meter of solar gives you over 200 watts for many hours of the day in realistic conditions in Europe/Canada, more in the US or tropical countries.
My electric utility just arbitrarily added 170 (~50% of the total) bucks to my bill this month, despite me using 11% less electricity.
The whole point of being a utility is to allow the "efficiency" of a monopoly without the ability to gouge the customers. Frankly, I'm looking to see if there is a lawsuit against the utility at this point so I can join on to it.
Also looking into residential solar. Ideally I can just give my electric utility the finger and disconnect my service. Between them and gas, I'm paying about 400 bucks a month, which could get me a nice loan for a solar array, battery backup, and all electric appliances.
And, funny enough, you would be doing them, the world, the datacenters, and yourself some good.
Yeah the problem is going to be getting the loan, and I would need about 1900sqft for the solar array, which would take up most of my yard. I'd need to elevate it up near the roofline of the house, so the entire back yard would be one big partially shaded patio. Which sounds nice, but I don't think the city will let me build it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
They increased their energy use to produce a provably inferior model. What the hell are they doing?
Raking in vc money?
“States feel pressure to act”
First of all, did they interview all the States? Secondly did the states say they “felt” “pressure” “to act”? And lastly, Bull.Shit.
Tiered pricing would help.
I see white roofs that can be dark themed to reduce the load on the grid.
Wasn't there a country with too much solar, causing electricity prices to fall too low?
Do they not have any space left for data-centres?
load more comments
(4 replies)
view more: next ›