We've been here before [1]. In that case, extra load on the grid meant the municipality needed to purchase more power (at higher prices), which raised everybody's prices.

Electricity supply is highly regulated. Prices for electricity are constrained and often set by state regulators. These are so-called "usage fees". But beyond that the utility is allowed to charge customers for infrastructure and transmissio and those fees are out of control. We recently had a court case where a North Carolina utility illegally overcharged customers but the judge didn't assign damages because legally the utility could just charge customers for those damages [2]. And the legislature passed laws to protect the utility as well.

This is going to get worse too because private equity is rapidly moving into this market and they know that capex can be entirely pushed onto customers with no recourse.

So the data centers tend to get sweetheart deals on electricity too. So while the total cost of electricity has gone up (per Mwh), they pay less pushing even more burden onto everyone else. Plus they get discounts on property taxes, energy tariffs and other taxes, as in the case of Kevin O'Leary's mega-DC in Utah.

But this state interconnect bill is another level of evil because it's pushing the costs onto states that have nothing to do with the data center and won't get any "benefit" (there is no benefit) anyway.

What we need are laws that make these projects pay for their own infrastructure. This might cause them to build near power sources. Great. Away from people, mostly.

The level of regulatory corruption here is actually sickening. Take Elon's Grok DC in Memphis that exploits local laws against clean air by using "mobile" gas turbines in the city of Memphis.

[1]: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/power-hungry-cry...

[2]: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/no-refunds-for-duke-...

Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI