So why is it the duty of our country to gather all electricity possible for the richest people to waste on burning out GPUs so they can lose money on free chatbots?
For the same reason housing should be a speculative investment, and healthcare services available only to the highest bidder.
The one state that refuses to connect to the interstate power grid and has Uber-like surge pricing on electricity? Yeah, I’m sure this won’t result in regular people footing the bill for more billionaire profits.
Texas is a joke, but not a good one.
Uber-like surge pricing on electricity
We don’t really: that story you heard from a few years ago was the only company that billed like that. The customers made a bet that the pricing averages through the day (lower at night, higher cost during the day) would average out in their favor over fixed-cost billing, and frankly, it did right up until it didn’t.
They took a risk and got bit by, frankly, not understanding how the system works and basically ate the spikes.
Everyone else paid $0.09/kwh or so during that whole period, and the electric providers ate the cost because when you’re averaging out spikes across millions of kwh, it won’t lead to bankruptcy.
Texas pays 11 dollars per kilowatt hour. Far lower than left wing states and has a manufacturering base.
Every Texan I know has a generator to deal with the unreliability of the grid, and there’s never been an article about someone in Iowa getting a surprise $100k electric bill…and the average wage in Texas is substantially lower than in “left wing” states like California or Washington…so not sure you’re making an apples-to-apples comparison, but time will be the judge, we can all check-in in a year and see how this plays out. Does Lemmy have a remind me! bot?
Wanting to add that Washington, particularly Tacoma and other nearby counties are some of the only major cities whose power comes 100% from renewables.
Every Texan I know
So none?
I lived in TX while I was stationed there for like 3 years. Exactly 0 people I’ve met there had a generator.
and the average wage in Texas
The cost of living is also significantly less.
California or Washington
Where it’s double my mortgage payment to have a 2 be apartment?
Texan here. I don’t have a generator. Blackouts basically haven’t been a thing in my area since like 15 years ago, so it really depends on location. Also my electric bill works the same way as it would in any other state; the problem is when people buy electricity at what you might call “market price”: most of the time it’s cheaper, but you get fucked over sooner or later. It’s kind of like that story about people’s AC being controlled by the power company. They signed up for a program that explicitly set your AC higher during high-demand periods and then surprise Pikachu faced when the company did what they said they would do.
That said, our grid is still definitely trash (as are many other things here) and I’m desperately trying to move. Basically the only thing we’ve got going for us is the food is amazing.
California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour. Texas grid is better. Not only does Texas consume the most electricity, they do it at lower prices, comparable to poor states like New Mexico. Bidenomics subsidized green energy at loss in the Texas grid.
California pays 19 dollars per kilowatt hour.
I think that you might be thinking cents, not dollars.
Typical residential electricity prices in the US are two digits number of cents per dollar.
Also, I’m pretty sure that California’s residential average price in 2025 is above $0.19/kWh. Maybe that’s the cost of generation alone or something.
EDIT: This has PG&E’s residential pricing at about twice that, unless someone’s getting low-income assistance.
They list their cost of generation there as being about $0.14/kWh.
Exactly. I have family in CA, WA, and I live in Utah, which is quite the gamut when it comes to electrical generation. CA is by far the most expensive, followed by UT (we’re pretty average), followed by WA (cheap due to tons of hydro). CA is expensive because their electricity policies are stupid IMO, UT is cheap because we’re somewhat reasonable (too much fossil fuels, but competitive renewables), and WA is cheap because they have more water than they know what to do with (ironically though, their water prices are higher than ours).
No dummy, you’re missing a decimal point. California only pays 19 CENTS per kwh.
And if conservative Texas is so great how come they pay 20% more per kwh for electricity than deep blue Washington State?
Everything’s bigger in Texas, especially the idiots & excuses.
Washington has hydroelectric sources. 67 percent of its power is from hydro sources. Wind and solar are a tiny portion of its energy mix. Even nuclear power exceeds its wind and solar energy sources. Texas has proven it can scale energy sources the fastest. Texas has the most renewable energy in the US. It has the most solar and wind energy of any state. Washington isn’t a top manufacturing state. It can’t handle the demand load and Texas has the highest energy demand because it is a top manufacturing state. When you are dealing with energy intensive manufacturing, costs add up, go ask the Germans. The Texas grid is just better.
The Texas grid is just better.
As a Texan who has lost power, for weeks at a time, 4 times in the last 10 years, I disagree. I live near a major city and we lose power almost every time there’s strong wind, rain, or sub-freezing temps. Maybe you’re just lucky to live where you live? I’ve lived all over my city, and it’s surrounding suburbs, and it’s been pretty much the same everywhere.
“In order to protect uptime of our glorious data centers, neighborhoods will begin experiencing rolling brownouts to reduce demand.”
- Texas soon probably.
Data centers need to bring their own power.
In a well regulated way that includes oversight, yes.
Hmm harness the holy light of the sun?
But what about all that holy black ooze?
How many do they need in the winter, tho?
Yeah, build that many minus 10-20%, and fill in the rest with solar, wind, etc. That way you get a good mix of base level production and burst demand.
So, exactly one uranium patch with a mk 3 miner stuffed full of slugs? Not including waste reprocessing or alternative recipes?
First 0 nuclear reactors will be built anywhere in US before 2035.
Texas is actually a renewables leader because, believe it or not, it has the least corrupt grid/utility sector, and renewables are the best market solution.
Even with 24/7 datacenter needs, near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build than fossil fuel plants and long transmission, and it also allows an eventual small grid connection to both provide overnight resilience from low transmission utilization fossil fuel as peakers anywhere in the state as well as export clean energy on sunnier days.
Market solutions, despite hostile governments, can reduce fossil fuel electricity even with massive demand surge. One of the more important market effects is that reliance of mass fossil fuel electricity expansion and expensive long high capacity transmission, would ensure a high captive cost at high fuel costs because of mass use, in addtion to extorting all regular electricity consumers. Solar locks in costs forever, including potentially reducing normal consumer electricity costs.
near site solar + 4 hour batteries is quicker to build
But is it quicker at scale? Can solar and battery production keep up with expanding demand? Can it continue to do so over 10+ years? Can it outpace demand and start replacing fossil fuels?
Usually the proper solution is a mix of technologies. It shouldn’t be solar vs nuclear vs wind, but a mixture.
Nuclear does a great job at providing a large amount of energy consistently. It’s really bad at fluctuations in demand, and it’s also really bad at quick rollout. I think it makes a lot of sense to build nuclear in Texas over the long term because it can start filling in demand as efficiency of older panels and batteries drop off, which extends the useful life of those installations and reduces reliance on battery backups.
I also think hydrogen is an interesting option as well, since it’s sort of an alternative to batteries, which can be hard to get at scale. Use excess generation for electrolysis and use those for mobile energy use (e.g. trucks, forklifts, etc) or electricity generation. It’s also not ideal, but it could make sense as part of a broader grid setup.
Solar is awesome and we need more of it. I just want to encourage consideration of other options so we can attack energy production from multiple angles.
“The least corrupt/utility sector” I must be thinking of the wrong Texas, which one are you referring too?
Compared to California, where everything is done to increase customer rates, or most other states where long wait lines to connect power occur, you can measure effective corruption by how much energy additions are made, including home solar. You can be critical of their exposure to power system failures, but that doesn’t make the system corrupt.
Your measure of corruption is what now? How many new things are built regardless of their need or what impacts they may have?
Very…unique standpoint.
Just that the lack of cheap energy built/connected is a function of all of the obstacles put in the way of those projects. They get done in Texas more than other places that “put out a better virtue vibe”, but behind the scenes put up obstacles.
Its interesting how you can only talk positively about Texas by comparing it to others.
Can you answer this question without comparing Texas to any other state or entity: How is charging hundreds of dollars per kWh during storms in the best interests of the “regular electricity consumers”?
I recognize that failing, but afaiu, it applied to a limited number of customers who “gambled on variable rates”. The political leadership there also shit talks renewables, putting false blame on them for grid failures, but the actual operational environment still permits a lot of renewable expansion: The basis for calling their system the least corrupt.
Do you genuinely think the folks who “gambled” really understood the implications? How many random mailers have you gotten asking to switch to a random third party provider because “it’s better for the env” or will “save money”?
I mean I’ll grant you California is a shitshow but it’s been a shitshow since republicans got on their knees for Enron in the 90s and literally hasn’t recovered. How about Florida, which has been a red state for 80% of the last 30 years, low regulation, but instead of building new power they are keeping nukes going well past their service life? Abundant sun. Abundant wave power. They have the fucking entire European heating system right off the coast.
One of the windiest, sunniest, emptiest places on earth and they want to waste water building reactors instead of renewables.
Hell, the geology means you can store energy in the ground using pressurized air.
What? I’ve grown up around people in the nuclear industry, and nothing I’ve ever learned about the function “wastes” water.
Some rambling on how I understand water to be used by reactors
You’ve got some amount of water in the “dirty loop” exposed to the fissile material, and in the spent fuel storage tanks. Contaminated water is stuck for that use, but that isn’t “spending” the water. The water stays contained in those systems. They don’t magically delete water volume and need to be refilled.
Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard “use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water”. Again, there’s no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Not saying you’re wrong. Renewables are absolutely preferable, and Texas is prime real estate to maximize their effectiveness. I’m just hung up on the “waste water building reactors” part.
Guessing it was some sort of research about the building process maybe, that I’ve just missed?
Building them doesn’t waste water, running them does. In a place with a lot of water they make sense but any industrial water usage in a place with limited water supplies - when there are lower usage alternatives - seems wasteful
They literally outlined the whole process… What stage in
Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard “use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water”. Again, there’s no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Wastes water?
If you send the water through a bunch of pipes it needs treated before it can be put back into the environment. This is true of any industrial process. This takes it out of circulation for a while, and in an arid state like Texas that’s a waste.
And reactors need a lot of water, which is why they’re built next to the ocean or a lake or something.
Why put water back in the environment at all if it’s needed to make steam again?
Because they use water for more than making steam. Much more water is used to cool the steam condensers and is often just dumped into the surrounding environment to cool off. Turkey Point in Florida has miles of canals that cool this water down.
If you don’t believe me, then listen to the IAEA who created a water management program for just this reason:
Countries in water scarce regions, and considering the introduction of nuclear power, may show concern on the requirement for securing water resources to operate nuclear power plants and search for strategies for efficient water management. Experience has shown that nuclear power plants are susceptible to prolonged drought conditions, forcing them to shut down reactors or reduce the output to a minimal level.
Sounds like Texas will be a nuclear waste dump soon.
Please! It would be such a nice improvement!
I want to get out of here :(
