Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year. That's especially painful during the dog days of summer, when air conditioners are working overtime.
Power-hungry data centers have been popping up all over, to serve the boom in artificial intelligence. The Energy Department projects data centers and other commercial customers will use more electricity than households for the first time ever next year. That's a challenge for policymakers, who have to decide how to accommodate that extra demand and who should foot the bill.
The soaring price of natural gas is also pushing power prices higher. More than 40% of electricity is generated using natural gas. As more gas is exported as liquid natural gas, the competition from foreign customers is driving up the price utilities have to pay here at home.
33 Comments
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 90 pts · 358d
So weird. It's almost like everything is somehow rising faster than inflation....
Joeffect@lemmy.world · 83 pts · 358d
Except minimun wage... somehow that hasnt gone up at all
ebolapie@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 358d
No, see, we can't raise minimum wage because of the - hmm, right.
Joeffect@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 358d
Quick blame it on Obama!
tehn00bi@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 358d
P1nkman@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 358d
It's because of her emails and his dick being on a computer!
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 21 pts · 358d
Feels like the meaning of "inflation" has been lost somewhere in there...
ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 358d
The meaning of inflation these days is "whatever the corporations think they can get away with charging."
skeezix@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 358d
Corporations phrase it differently: the charge "what the market will support". There's a magic point in an Excel chart where the markup is as high as can be while the sales remain high enough to be profitable. This is the point striven for: maximum profit at any human or environmental cost.
rayyy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 357d
Don't be silly. Women can just pop out more
slavesworkers and climate change is a hoax - floods, fires and hurricanes are a profit opportunity anyway.TheBenCommandments@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 358d
“Favorable market conditions”
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org · 41 pts · 358d
And America was great again. The end.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 358d
Oops, everything is Argentina now
cybervseas@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 358d
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 358d
How odd. Welp, I guess it’s just a mystery we’ll never solve.
Hey! Who’s up for stripping some more rights away from women! Yeah!
GroundedGator@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 358d
We need some sort of tax on any single location that uses above a certain threshold of electricity. I suspect that just the opposite is happening.
reddig33@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 358d
Meanwhile, electricity generation is cheaper and more abundant than ever — thanks to renewables.
aramis87@fedia.io · 16 pts · 358d
Not when AI and data centers are sucking up electricity and water faster than we can produce them.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 358d
No that just means that there's more competition for the electricity. Electricity is priced in a bid system. Price to bring another kW to market keep going down.
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 358d
Too bad that hardly matters when the infrastructure is owned by monopolists.
ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 358d
All so AI can tell recovering addicts to have a little meth as a treat
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 358d
Moderation is good advice, if they take meth a lot then they would be an addict. You should only consume one small rock a day.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 357d
Yeh so's food and heating, its amazing how everything is outpacing inflation yet somehow that's not the rate of inflation.
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 357d
Yeah but we need the power to fuel the AI projects of all the billionaires and mega corps. And it's reaching its limit, so we all have to pay for it.
So yeah, just use less lights, watch less porn, but we will have AI which will replace your job in the future in return! Keep on paying!
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 358d
There's a manufacturer of high voltage transmission towers I'm aware of that has seen its annual revenue double over just the last 2-3 years. It's a booming time for the electrical transmission industry. Good work if you can get it.
dotdi@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 358d
Didn’t Trump say he will bring prices down day one? I guess they will have to fire whoever came up with these numbers…
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 358d
Where are the "I did this." stickers?
krashmo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 358d
I'll ask Claude and Gemini to both make one for you. Then you can compare them and see which one you like more.
tal@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 358d
Evaporative coolers use a lot less power to produce a given amount of cooling than air conditioning does. As long as the relative humidity is low enough where you are and you don't need more than a given amount of cooling, that's an option.
NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 358d
Unfortunately, these work best in desert and mountain regions where water scarcity is becoming a bigger concern.
lemming741@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 357d
Cries in 75F dewpoint forecast all week 🥲
Xella@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 357d
Last month my electric bill was a around $300, this month it's $600. 🥲
devolution@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 357d
That explains why my normally 250 electric bill is now 400 a month.