Electricity Price Increases

[MossRoad]

If it's like the city we lived in near FtW, they will let it sit for a month or two and bring it back up when fewer people are there. Rinse and repeat until they get their way.

It'll come back in 6 months. It's a $13B project on top of $15B already up and running a mile away.

 

[Torvy]

I think the corporations building the data centers should be responsible for their own power production. They have the money to do it but would rather buy cheap, rural land buy power plants and expect us to subsidize them.

The only property tax that makes sense...I'd put a huge tax on private facilities that are build on arable farmland. The better the land, the higher the tax. Sometimes I think we should borrow an idea from ******. Everyone should spend a year or more on a farm, working the land. Kind of a cross between CCC camps and a kibbutz.

 

[Torvy]

It'll come back in 6 months. It's a $13B project on top of $15B already up and running a mile away.

Indiana has a 6-month rule?

If I were writing the rules, anything requiring approval would need to pass at least twice, with an election in-between. (Some states have this for amendments). If a variance/project is rejected, the threshold to pass the next attempt should be a 2/3, then 3/4, then unanimous.

We had a project go up right between a creek and our back fence in a tiny green space. They needed 10 zoning variances to put in their plan. Speculative developer. Neighbors all came out and shut it down. A year later it was all approved and under construction. When we left, they only had about 25% occupied.

 

[MossRoad]

That's a little better. It should be at least 3 years before they can try again.

If they wait that long, it'll go elsewhere. That's all there is to it....

Data centers are a fact of U.S. life. They'll go up somewhere and that's a fact. Wherever they go up, they generate tax dollars for the local government. That's a fact.

Our state enacted large property and state income tax reforms, so that cut off funding to local county and city governments. The only way for those local governments to generate enough money to provide basic services like fire, police, streets, sanitation is to raise local income taxes.

Large projects like this come with agreements for paying taxes to support local governments, agreements to not drain the water supply by using closed loop system and employing mostly air cooling, and agreements to not raise local electricity prices.

They create a TON of temporary construction jobs, then those jobs go away. They create SOME permanent jobs after construction is over.

At the meeting, the majority of people speaking for it are construction/electrical/plumbing unions and local government leaders. The majority of people speaking against it are people that live there. They elected the local officials, and were all for the first data center and battery plant and power plant and steel mill and solar farm, etc............. until they started building them and realized just how HUGE these places are. Now they're regretting their choices.

There's a large ridge running between the small town and these sites, so I guess they figured out of sight, out of mind. They forgot about the tax ramifications that came from the people they elected, and now the only way to generate taxes is large projects like this.

They are getting what they voted for and are now regretting it.

 

[Torvy]

Funny thing is, who all gets input.

Where I grew up after dad retired, they built a nice, new coal plant.

The community has always been fine with it. A few years back, they wanted to upgrade and expand it. Community was behind that, too. Then a neighboring state got a judge to shutter the improvements.

Lots of people would say, sure, but the pollution may drift into their state, or whatever.

The same is true with these huge power-sucking centers, but since the generation of the power happens elsewhere, out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

It all comes back to a short-sighted view (on 'both' sides) about how and where we generate and transmit power in the US. We need about 3X the amount of sustainable (not wind or solar) power generation than we have in order to meet future needs. Until that happens, non of thia other stuff should see the light of day.

 

[WinterDeere]

I think the corporations building the data centers should be responsible for their own power production. They have the money to do it but would rather buy cheap, rural land buy power plants and expect us to subsidize them.

That certainly feels right, until you consider that you're using a site hosted on and backed up to one of these data centers, to make this complaint.

Ever use Google to search for anything? Ever buy anything from Amazon? Ever back up your photos to any cloud service, such as Google Drive, Amazon Photos, iCloud, or OneDrive? Then you're part of the problem, or at least using the very thing we're all complaining about.

 

[MossRoad]

Funny thing is, who all gets input.

Where I grew up after dad retired, they built a nice, new coal plant.

The community has always been fine with it. A few years back, they wanted to upgrade and expand it. Community was behind that, too. Then a neighboring state got a judge to shutter the improvements.

Lots of people would say, sure, but the pollution may drift into their state, or whatever.

The same is true with these huge power-sucking centers, but since the generation of the power happens elsewhere, out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

It all comes back to a short-sighted view (on 'both' sides) about how and where we generate and transmit power in the US. We need about 3X the amount of sustainable (not wind or solar) power generation than we have in order to meet future needs. Until that happens, non of thia other stuff should see the light of day.

There's a nice, new, large gas power plant right next door to this project. There's another one in the town just to our north. We're on one of the largest aquifers in the country and the crossroads of America as far as roads, rails, and power grids go. It's only logical to locate things here, as we're within a day's drive of something like 80% of the U.S. population. So, data centers, massive warehousing, trucking, etc... are all good candidates for this location.

So, in the end, blame farmer Bob for selling his land to these things and moving out.

 

[gsganzer]

There's a huge demand for power. Every gas turbine manufacturer is sold out until 2037. Many of the projects I'm working on are starting out as simple cycle so they can get more power generation immediately, but they'll eventually be converted to combined cycle at a later date.

Pretty funny to see a gas turbine and then a long pipe with the exhaust stack 70' away. They'll slide the heat recovery section in later.

 

[John0829]

So, in the end, blame farmer Bob for selling his land to these things and moving out.

Farmer Bob sold out because he could not make a living by farming... because EVERYONE knows all food comes neatly wrapped in plastic from Walmart, Kroger or whatever super mart you live near, not some piece of farm land that would better serve to store selfie pics.

 

[caver]

The coop I retired from had a new coal unit on the drawing board many years ago and I believe land purchased. The project was scrapped. It was easier to put in gas peaking units.