Showing posts with label Wolf Richter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wolf Richter. Show all posts

Sunday, August 10, 2025

Power hungry data centers break the utility model of socializing electricity costs: Seventy percent of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand


 

 As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act

... Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year’s increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand. ... 

PJM [Interconnection, the mid-Atlantic grid operator], has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. 

In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a “massive wealth transfer” from average people to tech companies. ...

 Demand for Electricity Takes Off. US Power Generation by Source in 2024: Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geothermal, Biomass, Petroleum 

The quantity of electricity generated in the US by all sources, from natural gas to rooftop solar, rose by 3.1% in 2024 from 2023 to a record of 4,304,039 gigawatt-hours (GWh), according to data from the EIA today.

This is now clearly a breakout in demand, after 14 years of stagnation, from 2007 through 2021, when electricity users, to reduce their costs, invested in more efficient equipment – lights, appliances, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, heating and air-conditioning, etc. – and in better building insulation, shading, etc., to reduce their power costs. This relentless drive for greater efficiency kept demand roughly stable for years despite the growing economy and population. And it mired many power generators and electric utilities in a no-growth business where it was difficult to justify investment.

Now the scenario has changed, largely due to the growth in demand from data centers (AI, cloud, crypto) and the increasing penetration of EVs in the national vehicle fleet – EVs accounted for over 10% of US vehicle sales in 2024. ...

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Moody's missed not only Signature Bank's problems, but Silicon Valley Bank's as well

On Wednesday March 8, Moody’s still had an A3 rating on SVB Financial, owner of the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank, as it was already collapsing for all to see. Four notches into investment grade – a very respectable rating!

Friday, February 7, 2020

Bernie was right in 2015 and it's even worse now: Real wages of men are lower than they were 45 years ago, a fiasco













The median earnings of men working full time year-round in 2018 ticked up to $55,291. Adjusted for inflation, this was below the amount they earned in 1973, according to the annual data trove released by the Census Bureau today. In other words, there has been a “real” income decline for men over the past four-plus decades! ... [M]en’s real earnings are a fiasco.