Well of course they should pay for their own power!! They’re private companies! What am I missing here?
“ Data centers must pay for the grid upgrades they require and can’t siphon power from existing power plants, according to the bill. It also directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to update its rules related to transmission lines — which transport electricity — to allow data centers to reduce demand during peak energy hours. “
This seems reasonable to me.
Why aren’t they paying for their own power?
They’re not paying for additive demand. If grid updates or plant expansions cost $1b then that’s distributed across all customers equally based on their consumption. So let’s say there’s 1m customers and the utility spread the costs over 10 years… $100 more per customer assuming equal consumption across.
Schiff is proposing the data center itself is saddled with the $1b and all other customers bills are held flat.
Free market bro. People have a market and you just show up and take what ya want.
After you’ve already made a billion.
Because it’s cheaper to bribe officials to make the locals pay for it.