“Who you gonna’ believe? Me or your lying eyes.” Substitute Entergy’s spokesperson for Chico
Marx, and you have the current gaslighting telling you don’t believe what you see happening in
other states and what common sense tells you will happen here. Just trust Entergy not to raise
electric rates for small customers to benefit Amazon’s data centers.And don’t worry that Senate Bill 2001 sidelines Mississippi’s Public Service Commission (PSC)
and runs interference for Entergy. Mississippi’s politicians and economic developers who
passed SB 2001 say economic development is more important than affordable, reliable
electricity.
SB 2001 makes Mississippi more vulnerable to monopoly utility abuses than other states —
which are waking up to data center effects. The Washington Post’s recent “Data Center
Backlash” highlighted these effects: “ Data center projects dramatically increase load, costs, and
planning complexity for utilities especially electric and water systems if not paired with new
capacity, demand management, and clear cost-allocation rules.”
SB 2001 gives Entergy clear exceptions to capacity demand management and cost-allocation
rules for spending (investments) related to Amazon’s data centers. And the more Entergy
spends for Amazon’s plants, transmission lines, substations, etc., the more it makes
(guaranteed 10%+ return). And since the plants, transmission lines, substations, etc. for
Amazon also serve small customers, Entergy says it’s only fair that they pay for part of the
spending.
And not to worry that the spending is padded to expedite service for Amazon, and is not subject
to competitive bidding, and that rate increases for small customers are unlimited (SB 2001
removed a 4% annual cap on rate increases).
The WP says this about cost shifting retail rates. “In states with dense clusters of facilities,
residential electricity rates have risen notably as infrastructure costs are socialized across all
customers.” “ If data center demand is over-forecast or projects are cancelled after utilities
invest, other ratepayers can be left paying for underused plants and wires that were justified
primarily by expected data center growth.”
Entergy’s Chico says not to worry. There are no dense clusters of facilities in Mississippi. True,
but what happens when other opportunists take advantage of future sweetheart political deals
— justified in the name of economic development? Also remember Amazon’s load is large
relative to Entergy’s residential demand, which is only about a third of utilities’ residential
demand in other states with clusters of facilities. So it doesn’t take a cluster here to distort
Entergy’s residential rates. Amazon is big enough by itself. Especially with SB 2001 carve-outs
that favor Amazon and Entergy at the expense of residential customers.
There’s another residential rate increase lurking due to Amazon that flows straight to small
customers. The WP says: “Higher wholesale and capacity prices. Large, round-the-clock data
centers’ loads increase demand, which can push up wholesale energy and capacity prices that
flow through to customers’ bills.” Entergy buys imported electricity from the grid to meet system
demand when it can’t generate enough electricity. Data centers increase the cost of this
electricity and demand for it. This high-cost electricity flows directly to residential customers’
bills. Amazon makes it more likely that Entergy will import high-cost electricity for residential
customers.
There’s more to this data centers backlash story. It may be too late to save Entergy’s small
customers from higher rates due to Entergy and Amazon’s sweetheart deal. But it’s not too late
to help them understand that their rates are going up to benefit Amazon and Entergy because of
legislators who say economic development will help Entergy’s poor customers (who already
spend more of their income on energy than customers in any other state) have better lives.
Maybe in theory. But as Yogi said: “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.”
This post was authored by Bigger Pie Forum Chairman Kelly Williams. This post is a paid advertisement.
24 comments:
Yep. It's a race to the bottom.
No matter what we do, China is going to steal the tech and provide it cheaper. They have worked hard using their Forex surplus to corner every market possible on the planet.
BYD is outselling Tesla. They have a competitor for StarLink that is half the price. Name anything of value that you want and China has the market on lock.
Meanwhile, the boomers literally sold us out to China for decades. Sold their childrens’ and grandchildrens’ future for what?
It must be a real problem.'
""I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers," Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Monday. "Therefore, my Administration is working with major American technology companies to secure their commitment to the American people, and we will have much to announce in the coming weeks."" https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-reveals-plan-tackle-energy-bills-millions-11349266
Oh but don't worry! All the right people will get rich! Why else was there over two thousand new contractor licenses issued in one year (2022-23) when the average yearly amount is 300- 350. Oddly the SOS announced the addresses to 'businesses' may not be accurate due to 'fraudulent' business filings.
A sudden explosion of new, fraudulent businesses when all the 'deals' worked out and the population exploded with illegal, cheap labor. How strange.
People who have never held a hammer passed an open book test. It's almost just as convenient as Somalian child care.
How do we know it’s bad? Because they built everywhere else except Mississippi first, and everywhere else has told them no more. Now all they have left is southern shithole states to pull the “billions” wool over their stupid eyes. And our politicians are stupid and/or corrupt enough to buy in. To hell with the people.
Democrats and RINOs sold you out. Decades of Chinese financed budget busting deficit spending.
Any given business enterprise has the responsibility to cover their own business costs. I noticed Musk's xAI bought building space and a nearby power generating plant, hopefully to generate his own power needs.
It would be much cheaper if everyone just pitched into a pot to hire 100 people at whatever their data center salary would be and lets just have them pickup trash along the road. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the data centers using up our water as well.
Everyone doubling down and investing tax dollars on the AI bubble. What happens to all these facilities when it bursts?
2:07. Good point, but most data center jobs are very tech/engineering specific roles that are imported from out of state. So, our unemployment numbers should remain static.
No benefit.
Thanks, Tate.
Tater Tot just took another dump on low middle- & low-class people. Their electric bill is going to also harm the old people on fixed income. When this electricity debacle hits Tata Tot will have a nice lobbyist job in Washington DC.
Stupid to build a data center down south with heat and humidity. They are better suited for much colder weather. Unless the host state gives you the keys to the farm.
I agree with this article. Not one single Legislator should be re-elected. They all voted for it; they need to pay for it.
Those data centers drain water from surrounding wells and have a constant humm around them similar to your home computers. Cannot be good. Anyone voting for this needs to go.
Told u so. It is all talk now. The future holds a strained electrical grid that needs to be updated which takes money. Higher rates are inevitable. Keep drinking the koolaid, close ur eyes and hope for the best. It is a done deal and all u can hope going forward is that MS does not continue to be the dumping ground for the rest of the country to take advantage. We are a cheap date and our politicians sell us for nothing to the big guys.
This is true.....and the reason for "Greenland" where they'll be able to put all the Data Centers to be cooled for free.
@6:03 - So Alaska would be just as useful as Greenland and its already part of our country, right?
@6:44am - You can’t reason with these people. They’re too far gone.
@2:26 PM
Two words:
Crypto mining
Seems like it would be best to just put this data centers right beside large reservoirs where they could suck up the cold water at the bottom of the reservoir and then just recycle it back into the body of water, even better to use some up north where the water is colder, but wait the rich folks don't want to see them so come stick them in the pastures in Mississippi and let us foot the bill.
So dump the water back into a reservoir? Water leaving a data center's cooling system can be upwards of 113F so kiss any fish or plant life good bye as it will drastically increase the temp of whatever body of water you are dumping into. Some larger data centers use upwards of 5 million gallons of water a day. This also completely ignores anything else the water will introduce such as metal or chemical agents that it will pick up via the system. There is a reason why in colder environments they use the data center "cooling" system as a heater for the rest of the building.
To do what you are thinking would need an emersed datacenter system where the servers cooling blocks and piping is actually connected to a large metal enclosure that houses all the servers. The enclosure is than placed into the ocean and itself works as a giant heat exchanger, other countries and companies have experimented with this on a small scale and it works on a small scale. It would not work on the large scale needed for data centers.
Heat and humidity are bigger problems when you are air cooling a system, data centers are not air cooled. These servers are not like the computer sitting at your house, hell, a "nice" computer doesn't even use air cooling anymore. I haven't had a PC with air cooling for over a decade. These data centers are coming here to the hot and humid south because the land is cheap, the utilities are cheap (for them), and the labor is cheap. There are also resources such as water that they are getting cheap and when all the local communities notice how much the water usage causes issues for them they will be easily brushed off and protected by our leaders that sold us all out.
Like most everything this really doesn't benefit "the people" and Entergy is ALREADY raising it's damn rates ! Look for rolling blackouts galore in the coming years.
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