As they always fucking should have. The fact they didn’t for as long as they managed to really bothers me
Why is everyone so confused about this? This is not about paying for electricity. It’s about infrastructure.
Say you want to open a solar panel factory in Tennessee. You will need 5 MW of power. You go to the utility company and ask if they will be able to provide it. Turns out that they don’t have this capacity in your location and that they will have to add a substation or something.
Who should pay for it?
Usually the government does. The government supports development of industry and businesses by providing necessary infrastructure. Saying that some businesses now have to pay for the infrastructure themselves is discriminatory. It’s great that they are discriminating datacenters but it’s not obvious or universal.
Data centers demand enormous grid increases on short notice. That is why they are “discriminated” against
No, they are discriminated against because they are bad for everyone and they don’t want them there. If they offered benefits the state would expand the infrastructure.
I don’t think the state has some predefined time to expand the infrastructure. Where I live the request come in, companies can reserve the capacity and get it when it’s available. There are long term plans that let companies know when they will get it. If they have to wait for too long in one place they go somewhere else. I thinks this is more about kicking datacenters out of the queue, not having to work “on short notice”.
And now data center owners start competing electrical companies. This’ll be an interesting experiment.
New basketball rule forbids dogs taking part in the sport.
And water usage???
What an amazing law. Implement capitalism in a capitalist society, wow.
Many of them are already looking to do this. Microsoft for example are looking at building their own nuclear reactor. X are looking at orbital data centres.
Can’t wait to see a server meltdown in orbit…
Oh well law dih daw
The LPG generators powering SpaceX’s datacenters go brrr.
We can only hope that this becomes federal law.
Highly doubt it will. The way things are going, it will become a federal law that data centers must have their electricity subsidized by poor people, and states cannot overrule this law.
All citizens must do their patriotic duty and spend at least 3 hours per day turning hand-crank generators to make sure the machine gods (and more importantly, their oligarch owners) have enough electricity.
…while datacenters also get priority rights to water.
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A federal law would say that the power can only be generated by coal, oil or methane. Got to look after the fossil billionaires.
Tech companies bribe politicians. It’s well worth the investment for them.
most of the Ds on thier way out of office have fully allow datacenters to be built in thier states, whitmer is probably the latest example.
Whatever happened to that executive order Trump was so excited about, that said this exact same thing?
AI companies paid him off
Does that mean they just start up local diesel generators and make a bunch of smog and noise? This isnt the infra we want
It means that if a power generation plant can produce 100, but the demand is currently 50, and the datacenter wants 25, the datacenter needs to pay to expand the generation plant to 125.
It means that data centers will just find a way to have themselves classified as anything except for a data center… meanwhile anyone who happens to have more than 3 computers in their homes will have to pay extra on their electric bills.
Defining “computer” would be a nightmare IMO… Desktop? Laptop? Smartphone? Smart Watch? Game console? Tablet? Screen on the fridge? Alexa device?
I could legitimately say there’s at least 15-20 “computers” in my house right now, and I’m not even trying hard to justify things.
Technically, anything with a procesor is a computer and since pretty much anything with a plug of battery has one of those, we’re all living in a datacenter.
We will be sending you a bill to upgrade our power plant. Thank you for your data center services.
Nice work TN. I just hope it’s not totally bullshit
Tennessee has one of the worst state governments in the country. So it probably is bullshit.
Yeah, I imagine the language is something like “data centers must pay for last mile infrastructure” meaning the transmission lines from the DC to a nearby substation, while everyone else has to pay for the utility company to build new power plants to meet the demand requirements.
Guys, I have an announcement: I read the article
Some who voted against the bill worried about an amendment to the original proposal that, in limited circumstances, will allow utilities to allocate portions of the infrastructure costs across the broader system, rather than charging only the data center, if the upgrades also benefit other customers or improve or replace existing infrastructure.
So yeah, it’s bullshit
That sounds reasonable, no? If a data centre needs 50MW and instead of building a 50MW generator they build a 200MW one while also replacing an aging 100MW generator then they’ve increased total capacity, provided better energy security for their other customers while also providing the initial 50MW required for the data centre.
Not saying I agree with the idea of the data centres and that this couldn’t be abused in any way but it’s not necessarily a maliciously included amendment.
I would expect this to be instead of building 50MW they build 51MW and split the cost evenly between everyone, thus contributing minimum while paying also minimum
Nailed it!
All the self powered data centers I know of are burning massive amounts of diesel.
The Xai one in Memphis has gas turbines that are driving the surrounding population sick with chemical and noise pollution.
It’s so rare to see anything good happen in Tennessee politics that it’s hard to believe.
Bill Lee signed this in to law?!? Bill Lee, the drag queen? Slay!
Haha, did this bill Lee fellow that I presume is governor, dress up in drag?
I think I recall something about this years ago, but it could have been a different Republican politician many of them like to do this at their douchey frats. Then get elected and hate on gays and trans and whatever.
yep. very anti LGBTQ dude. Several pics of him in a dress surfaced a while back.
That’s what they meant when they associated drag queens with pedophiles.
Wait no. I wanted it to be an open and proud drag queen, not another JD Vance/Nguyen Van Thok/Kitara Ravache
Those good for nothing ai agents need to go out & get JOBS & pay for their own damn electrons!
Pay for them with what money? More taxpayer-funded handouts?
My unreasonably cheep rates thank you.
