I’d rather my part of the public money go to help an alcoholic neighbor than to subsidize a certain Coastal Elite’s habit of buying golf courses and ballrooms.

It's essentially supply and demand. If the data center is willing to pay more, then everyone has to pay more. I hate it.

It makes sense if you're a greedy piece of shit that values corporate investment more than the people you serve.

I'm glad you see that it doesn't make sense though it means you are a good person.

Places like data centers don't pay the same rate that individuals do though. They get an industrial rate.

Basically they cut them a break so they can fuck you. The supply is more More than enough and the only demand that increased was from corporate interests.

"When capacity goes up prices will come back down"

Loooooool. I know that's how its supposed to work but you're mistaken if you think that they will ever decrease the price. That almost never ever happens.

My electric company (which is the only one in my area) even started fucking mining bitcoin and they hit us with a surge pricing model charging us even more for the electricity we use not only during daytime but also during summer. I'm sure they say some bullshit about capacity loads or whatever.

They sure got enough capacity to mine the fuck out of that bitcoin though.

Greedy fucks, all of them.

Yupp just like every single other aspect of our living here our lives have been made worse to protect the interests of large corporations.

Land of the free, and all that.

Ideally anyway. Government interference can always screw it up and create barriers to competition.

Where I live (Ontario, Canada) on-peak electricity prices have pretty much exactly kept pace with inflation over the past 20 years, so in effect electricity costs have not gone up.

Off-peak prices have crept up more than that but solar power doesn’t help with off-peak generation at all. Wind turbines do produce more at night but we’ve had government subsidies to encourage building wind power capacity and those subsidies result in higher wholesale prices for that power (actually above the off-peak prices consumers pay).

it's my life choices that rise my electricity prices, i should have built a giant data centre to consume the equivalent of a whole town do the taxpayer's would subsidise my bills.

See, the data is right there to raise the rates on the data centers causing the rise in demand and not the households.

It depends and varies wildly based on your area and how the electricity is actually sold.
If they are using an energy stock exchange, as many places are, then increased capacity, especially increased renewable capacity, greatly reduces the price per kWh because the price depends on the most expensive method of generation.
And because renewables always offer their electricity for free to the exchange, as they don't have any fuel etc costs, you sometimes end up in the peculiar situation like here in Finland (and in the entire NordPool area) tomorrow between 13:00 and 16:00, where electricity is literally priced at 0€/MWh, as there is enough renewables to cover it all.

Look up your local “Public Service Commission”

Then note that everyone on it is a republiQan.

It's more that they get a bulk discount, whereas Jamaica m individuals don't, and apparently they can set the bulk discount below the generation cost.

It's incredibly dumb and why I'd like there to be more choice. Instead of one company handling supply and service for industry and residents, there should be multiple companies handling supply and an independent org handling service. Basically, the suppliers would bring the electricity to the cities, and cities would handle it from there. Then they need to compete for the lowest cost energy, customers can pick which suppliers they'd like, and prices per KWh would be static regardless of customer (the only discount for large customers would be service).

Quite a few states actually have systems like this. In which individuals can choose their power generator at will. It is nice as it increases competition and lets you tailor energy use to your wants.

If you want 100% green, switch to a generator that does that. If your default utility gets too expensive, switch to a cheaper one, etc.

The closest we have is buying green energy in blocks, which means you reserve that much generation capacity. In theory, they have to build more capacity if demand outstrips suooly, but if they produce more than is reserved, they just sell at the normal (lower) rate. If you use less than you reserve, you just pay more.

It's a wonky system and I'd prefer to choose by provider instead. At least our electricity provider has to ask the state legislature for permission to raise prices, so that's nice. Energy here isn't all that expensive (around the nationwide median) and moving toward green energy, but I think I'd prefer a more competitive system.