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Comment by bdangubic | Hacker News Reader

I live in northern va and I can tell you that histeria is about ballooning electric and other bills. vast majority of population is unfortunately “not there” in regards to any unrest about AI

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Not saying that increases in power bills aren't caused by ai datacenters at all, but I would like to remind people that there is currently a conflict going on that is impairing 5-50% of the worlds energy supply, which even if we used none of it, still would impact us (LNG exports) and getting people angry at tech is a good distraction for this time of year.

I think there's more to the story than only AI causing higher electricity bills

there is definitely more to the story when you are not personally affected by it deeply, then you have the luxury of looking at “deeper meanings” and shit. when you are, shit is quite simple and to the point. I attend every public hearing, community open house and submit shit online (https://www.loudoun.gov/datacenterstandards if you live in the area) and it has absolutely nothing (and never will) to do with some conflict in some shithole place. it is 100% a local issue and it is not only if you have the luxury to not be personally affected by and which gives you additional luxury to dream up “global reasons…”

Is there a well known reason that the US has ruled out building more power plants to meet the increasing demand? This seems like a weird complaint; if it is a problem that this industrial activity uses power, why not ban all industrial activity? Traditionally the response to more demand has been to build more supply.

1. Power plants take a long time to build and large capital investments, typically both public and private dollars. The power demand for the current hyperscaler datacenter trend is happening faster than supply can keep up, guaranteeing the current spike in prices.

2. Most heavy industrial users of power are running stable businesses that are often expected to offset some of the infrastructure costs themselves, making payments over time. Not only have many hyperscalers bent the rules to avoid doing this, even if they did do things the right way, much of the rapid investment is highly leveraged and if a bubble pops, taxpayers would be stuck with the infrastructure bill anyway.

Because the bubble will pop if they have to wait for power plants to be built.

every AI related post on HN has a timer until a “bubble” comment makes its grand appearance :)

Yup. From Fairfax. Very much what you said.

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