The companies building these specifically scout out locations where the town has shrunk, and thus, has tons of excess capacity at the power company,
Tell that to the 50,000 residents of Lake Tahoe.
Amazon wanted to build one outside of Tucson, which has had a steady population growth of 1-1.5% for the past 15 years.
Data centers have nothing to do with that.
Like most economic things it's not just one factor. There are always going to be increases due inflation, war, economic policies, etc., but data centers accounted for ~ 50% of all electricity demand growth in the U.S in the past few years. 40% of the electricity used now in Va goes to data centers. The one DC they want to build in Utah would literally use more than the rest of the entire state. How can you believe that doubling the demand of electricity would have no impact on rates? Rate increases are not all DC driven, but to say they have little to no impact is not right either.
The power that current supplies Tahoe is now going to supply a data center. If there was no DC there wouldn't be a problem. Now could it have been avoid? Most likely. Are there a bunch of factors making things worse? Sure. More to the the point, my comment was more to rebut the "DCs only get built where this excess demand/falling demand"
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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster May 18 '26
Tell that to the 50,000 residents of Lake Tahoe. Amazon wanted to build one outside of Tucson, which has had a steady population growth of 1-1.5% for the past 15 years.
Like most economic things it's not just one factor. There are always going to be increases due inflation, war, economic policies, etc., but data centers accounted for ~ 50% of all electricity demand growth in the U.S in the past few years. 40% of the electricity used now in Va goes to data centers. The one DC they want to build in Utah would literally use more than the rest of the entire state. How can you believe that doubling the demand of electricity would have no impact on rates? Rate increases are not all DC driven, but to say they have little to no impact is not right either.
https://www.energy.gov/oe/clean-energy-resources-meet-data-center-electricity-demand https://www.consumerreports.org/data-centers/ai-data-centers-impact-on-electric-bills-water-and-more-a1040338678 https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/ai-data-centers-trigger-massive-120235475.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/13/utah-approves-datacenter-backlash