Electricity prices have increased at a rate exceeding overall inflation, intensifying public complaints regarding the affordability of energy and other essentials.
The president whose party controls all of congress can do more than “demand” things. He never even considers just requesting legislation to actually make things happen…
Again, it is easy to say more any outlandish thing you want. Watch, "AI companies will need to pay for use of copyrighted material in the training of their AI." See you can say it all day. But thing will happen.
The US(and Canada) have a bidding system for power. Not fixed rates that many nations have. So AI companies have been outbidding consumers and manufacturers and so that has had the effect of driving electricity costs up.
No, it’s really being said as hay tech Bros don’t worry about it. I’m gonna go out and say “I demand you pay the power bill “but don’t worry we’ll let you keep passing the cost onto the Poor schmucks
Yeah yeah yeah, really believable. Demand huh? How many laws have you broken already that will let the tech companies get away with it, and then Trump has completely poisoned the well because he couldn't keep his silly little mouth shut.
Plus we know a small $1M donation to the new Whitehouse Construction Fund will erase $1B of grid interconnection charges that the rest of us have to pay.
Trump DEMANDS that the Epstein files be released! lol
This looks to be in reference to the FERC rulemaking directive to have large load customers pay for their interconnections? Seems fair to me and a good move by the admin.
No, it’s more nebulous than that and not attached to any specific action. Look at Microsoft’s “plan” and literally the first energy point is “we will pay utility rates that recover our cost of service.” Which of course should always be true! It’s an admission that they have been getting deals with utilities to underpay. They also say they will work with utilities and PUCs on their rates, which in practice means intervening in rate cases and then arguing for as few costs to be assigned to their large load customer class.
Could you share a source on the “deals with utilities to underpay”? I haven’t heard of this but that’s fascinating if true.
Generally the bigger issue with data centers is that the cost to interconnect (often millions) has been socialized and passed onto rate payers. I haven’t heard anything about data centers paying anything other than the price-to-compare rates for the kWhs.
I'm guessing the realization is sinking in that he needs to fix cost of living or else he'll lose elections. (Maybe the events in Iran are driving the point in.) Pressure on the Fed for the same reason — if the economy slips into recession, it's going to be a hard recession. Reportedly he had a call with Elizabeth Warren on the topic too. And he believed Venezuelan oil would lower energy prices. So, no, I think he actually wants to reduce costs for consumers; he's just desperate and clumsily looking for mechanisms that don't require admitting earlier mistakes.
When large data centers are built, they are large electric customers. That demand in the area then requires costly transmission system upgrades. And those upgrades costs are split among the customers in the area. So if you were in your house for a decade, relatively stable electric prices, and a data center moves across the street, you get to help pay for the transmission upgrades that data center needs for power.
😆. That is where you come in. Have you looked at the dividend payments for stock? That money is for the investors. You are here to pay for the upkeep etc. That is why those data centers ask for tax abatements and get those too. Then all their costs are put on other people and entities.
Day-ahead vs spot (real-time) electricity markets are basically planning vs reality — because the grid has a hard rule: electricity production must equal demand every moment. In the day-ahead market, the grid operator runs an auction today to schedule electricity generation for each hour tomorrow. Power plants submit bids (how much they can produce and at what price), utilities/large buyers submit expected demand forecasts, and the market “clears” to produce tomorrow’s plan and day-ahead prices. This lets the grid commit enough generation ahead of time and gives buyers/sellers a relatively stable baseline price for most of their expected energy.
But forecasts are never perfect — and since the grid has very little storage, you can’t just “pull extra electricity from a tank” if demand suddenly rises or a plant trips offline. That’s why the spot market (usually the real-time market) runs every few minutes to keep production and demand balanced live. If demand is higher than planned or supply drops, the operator dispatches fast resources (peakers, batteries, demand response), and spot prices can spike because the grid urgently needs power right now. If there’s excess generation (like lots of wind/solar and low demand), spot prices can even go negative to incentivize someone to reduce output or absorb energy.
It's confusing AF to me and I work, in part, in energy planning, but luckily I don't touch these markets. The way I understand it, there's the day ahead market and there's the spot market - day ahead is self explanatory but the spot market is the day of market that corresponds with sales every couple minutes. It's all supply and demand, but if supply is too high or too low, assuming dand is constant, I think it can cause end users' prices to shoot up. So it's like buyers and sellers are trading energy "stocks" (in kWh), but if the price bottoms out then utilities are essentially paying users to consume energy and that forces them to elevate their standard price structures.
Separate from the markets, and this is where my work more so is connected, there's the interconnection process that every major developer has to go through with the utility. At a high level, it's a system capacity review, and if the local/regional grid can't handle it or new generation/transmission infrastructure is needed to support the development, like a data center, the utility and the developer enter into a cost sharing agreement. And the infrastructural improvement costs borne by the utility in that agreement get passed on to end users in the next year's rate hikes.
When Trump is threatening these companies he could care less if the skip out on their electric bill. What he is really saying to them is where is my protection money (bribes). Thump never does anything about these by problems, he just wants to remind these companies he wants his cut of the action. And if they don’t pay up he will send the Justice Dept to investigate.
They weren't skipping out on their electricity bills in the first place. Prices have gone up because there has been an increase in demand, it's basic economics. But it's not as if they were getting free electricity...
They pay the cheapest rates because it is a constant use pattern. Residential pays the most because they can screw over small customers and the delivery isn’t a steady flow.
Here in California I pay 26 cents KWH. Business pays 8 cents KWH. We are subsidizing high power usage by commercial entities.
Or he'll just go back on his word, fully cognizant. He ran as the fully cognizant guy, against Biden. People make deals with him, thinking he'll treat them differently. He chews them all up and spits them out. All of them. Fecking idiots.
Such a tough guy. Telling Microsoft to pay its power bill. Thinking that other electricity users have been paying Microsoft's power bill this past year. Wow, that's really coming down hard on big tech! Such a brilliant approach to economics. Why didn't anyone think of this before? Must not have been the chosen one. /s
Data centers are already starting to be required to cover their own costs due to local legislation catching up. This clown is saying it now so when they do it he claims credit. Next week he’ll declare cars should have some form of occupant restraints.
Wait, they don't? Don't they pay their electric bills for their servers and facilities?
So, let me see if I have this straight. There are gobs of energy projects in the works... infrastructure improvements, distribution improvements, wind turbines, solar, etc.
Trump cancels it because he is a fragile little snowflake of a man who is butthurt that Biden signed that bill. He cancels those projects. Then, he wonders why there isn't more power generation available, and wonders why there is a shortage, with the accompanying price spikes to consumers.
With thinking like that, it's no wonder all of his businesses fail.
Just because a data center “pays for its electricity” doesn’t mean there’s zero risk to ratepayers. It comes down to rate design and who bears the fixed costs of all the new generation/transmission the utility has to build to serve that load.
If the utility spends $X billion on new plants + transmission, those are mostly fixed costs that get recovered over decades through rates (often embedded in the $/kWh).
First question: are those costs spread across all customers, or is there a dedicated/industrial rate (or contract tariff) that makes the data center pay for the infrastructure it drives? If it’s the former, ratepayers absolutely take on risk, because they’re subsidizing the buildout needed for a single large customer.
Even if there is a special rate for the data center, the next risks still exist: what if the data center doesn’t consume as much as forecast (lower utilization, efficiency improvements, lower growth, etc.)? Now the utility has built assets expecting a certain revenue stream, and that shortfall has to be recovered somehow.
And the big one: what if the data center boom turns into a bubble and projects get delayed, scaled back, or shut down before the utility recovers its investment? That’s classic stranded asset risk — and in regulated utility land, stranded costs often end up getting socialized unless the contract is airtight (take-or-pay, minimum demand charges, exit fees, credit support, etc.).
So yes, data centers pay for electricity. But unless the PUC forces strong contracts and cost allocation rules, ratepayers can still get stuck holding the bag.
I hear there is some damning stuff in there for Trump. This has to be super embarrassing for Trump. I hope he doesn't do anything to distract from those documents.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ POTUS could have an energy policy not focused on COAL and OIL! But focused on delivering more power plants and of course renewables that actually cost less and are much faster to install.
More demands like this are just posturing, for political advantage, for positions that go nowhere, yet create insider trading opportunities for him and his cronies.
So let the tech giants underwrite more solar farms, wind farms, grid batteries and transmission lines. I don't see a problem except Donald doesn't like solar or wind.
I think a fair outlook to have on those rare occasions when Trump makes an agreeable point is that talk is cheap and he is such a corrupt dullard that you just can’t trust him to properly follow through.
Tragic: worst person you know makes a good point
It's his way of demanding a bribe
They will want solar and wind if they are footing the bill. Big if.
The president whose party controls all of congress can do more than “demand” things. He never even considers just requesting legislation to actually make things happen…
Didn’t Chuck Schumer and his followers shutdown the U.S. government for 43 days? Isn’t the next shutdown scheduled for 16 days from now?
Recent evidence seems to impeach your contention.
Cool he should let them pay for solar and offshore wind, the two least expensive forms of power generation.
Truly, man yells at cloud.
Again, it is easy to say more any outlandish thing you want. Watch, "AI companies will need to pay for use of copyrighted material in the training of their AI." See you can say it all day. But thing will happen.
But wait, if they aren’t paying for their power… who is?
The US(and Canada) have a bidding system for power. Not fixed rates that many nations have. So AI companies have been outbidding consumers and manufacturers and so that has had the effect of driving electricity costs up.
No, it’s really being said as hay tech Bros don’t worry about it. I’m gonna go out and say “I demand you pay the power bill “but don’t worry we’ll let you keep passing the cost onto the Poor schmucks
Yeah yeah yeah, really believable. Demand huh? How many laws have you broken already that will let the tech companies get away with it, and then Trump has completely poisoned the well because he couldn't keep his silly little mouth shut.
Plus we know a small $1M donation to the new Whitehouse Construction Fund will erase $1B of grid interconnection charges that the rest of us have to pay.
Trump DEMANDS that the Epstein files be released! lol
This looks to be in reference to the FERC rulemaking directive to have large load customers pay for their interconnections? Seems fair to me and a good move by the admin.
No, it’s more nebulous than that and not attached to any specific action. Look at Microsoft’s “plan” and literally the first energy point is “we will pay utility rates that recover our cost of service.” Which of course should always be true! It’s an admission that they have been getting deals with utilities to underpay. They also say they will work with utilities and PUCs on their rates, which in practice means intervening in rate cases and then arguing for as few costs to be assigned to their large load customer class.
Could you share a source on the “deals with utilities to underpay”? I haven’t heard of this but that’s fascinating if true.
Generally the bigger issue with data centers is that the cost to interconnect (often millions) has been socialized and passed onto rate payers. I haven’t heard anything about data centers paying anything other than the price-to-compare rates for the kWhs.
He is doing this to get them to bribe him he will act like he never said anything in a week or two.
I'm guessing the realization is sinking in that he needs to fix cost of living or else he'll lose elections. (Maybe the events in Iran are driving the point in.) Pressure on the Fed for the same reason — if the economy slips into recession, it's going to be a hard recession. Reportedly he had a call with Elizabeth Warren on the topic too. And he believed Venezuelan oil would lower energy prices. So, no, I think he actually wants to reduce costs for consumers; he's just desperate and clumsily looking for mechanisms that don't require admitting earlier mistakes.
Yep, he wants bribes so he can waive requirements for those that pay up.
Second time this week that I have a thumbs up and want to say “GO President Trump”!
Oh, he wants a payout to Trumps.
Hee hee, I wonder if those cancelled windmills and solar panels would help with electricity rates?
Trump says a lot of things that aren't true or never happen.
Are they not paying for power?
When large data centers are built, they are large electric customers. That demand in the area then requires costly transmission system upgrades. And those upgrades costs are split among the customers in the area. So if you were in your house for a decade, relatively stable electric prices, and a data center moves across the street, you get to help pay for the transmission upgrades that data center needs for power.
You'd think the electricity company would be happy to pay for that, if it locks in revenue.
😆. That is where you come in. Have you looked at the dividend payments for stock? That money is for the investors. You are here to pay for the upkeep etc. That is why those data centers ask for tax abatements and get those too. Then all their costs are put on other people and entities.
We are. Look up how energy is produced and how they sell it via auction. Very interesting
Lol the spot market goes wayyy over regular joes' heads.
Can you give the 2 cent version? Asking for a friend...
Day-ahead vs spot (real-time) electricity markets are basically planning vs reality — because the grid has a hard rule: electricity production must equal demand every moment. In the day-ahead market, the grid operator runs an auction today to schedule electricity generation for each hour tomorrow. Power plants submit bids (how much they can produce and at what price), utilities/large buyers submit expected demand forecasts, and the market “clears” to produce tomorrow’s plan and day-ahead prices. This lets the grid commit enough generation ahead of time and gives buyers/sellers a relatively stable baseline price for most of their expected energy.
But forecasts are never perfect — and since the grid has very little storage, you can’t just “pull extra electricity from a tank” if demand suddenly rises or a plant trips offline. That’s why the spot market (usually the real-time market) runs every few minutes to keep production and demand balanced live. If demand is higher than planned or supply drops, the operator dispatches fast resources (peakers, batteries, demand response), and spot prices can spike because the grid urgently needs power right now. If there’s excess generation (like lots of wind/solar and low demand), spot prices can even go negative to incentivize someone to reduce output or absorb energy.
It's confusing AF to me and I work, in part, in energy planning, but luckily I don't touch these markets. The way I understand it, there's the day ahead market and there's the spot market - day ahead is self explanatory but the spot market is the day of market that corresponds with sales every couple minutes. It's all supply and demand, but if supply is too high or too low, assuming dand is constant, I think it can cause end users' prices to shoot up. So it's like buyers and sellers are trading energy "stocks" (in kWh), but if the price bottoms out then utilities are essentially paying users to consume energy and that forces them to elevate their standard price structures.
Separate from the markets, and this is where my work more so is connected, there's the interconnection process that every major developer has to go through with the utility. At a high level, it's a system capacity review, and if the local/regional grid can't handle it or new generation/transmission infrastructure is needed to support the development, like a data center, the utility and the developer enter into a cost sharing agreement. And the infrastructural improvement costs borne by the utility in that agreement get passed on to end users in the next year's rate hikes.
And have on site water reprocessing.
Until they pay him off. The cost will then be shifted onto the backs of the working poor
Wow! The sun does shine on a dogs ass sometimes. I actually agree with this sentiment.
Feels like lip service ahead of midterms
Along with capping credit card interest rates and blocking corporations from buying housing. Trying hard to drum up support ahead of midterms.
💯
When Trump is threatening these companies he could care less if the skip out on their electric bill. What he is really saying to them is where is my protection money (bribes). Thump never does anything about these by problems, he just wants to remind these companies he wants his cut of the action. And if they don’t pay up he will send the Justice Dept to investigate.
They already paid him a lot. This is what you get for putting a bully in office.
In this case, his rat-cunning instinct has cut in. He knows average families in his base will hurt, so he's saying nice things to keep them onside.
His record of following through with such promises is very poor though. Blame it on Biden.
They weren't skipping out on their electricity bills in the first place. Prices have gone up because there has been an increase in demand, it's basic economics. But it's not as if they were getting free electricity...
They pay the cheapest rates because it is a constant use pattern. Residential pays the most because they can screw over small customers and the delivery isn’t a steady flow.
Here in California I pay 26 cents KWH. Business pays 8 cents KWH. We are subsidizing high power usage by commercial entities.
They get rate breaks for large scale usage. While everyday consumers pay a higher per kw rate.
Yes, because they usually buy in advance making it easier for electricity companies to manage load.
Orangina Grandpa is off his meds in his rant for the day tomorrow he won’t remember a thing
Or he'll just go back on his word, fully cognizant. He ran as the fully cognizant guy, against Biden. People make deals with him, thinking he'll treat them differently. He chews them all up and spits them out. All of them. Fecking idiots.
Water? Neither humans nor machine can live without
Micro-modulator reactors incoming?
And I think we should also look into monorails as well, just one more time.
It's ironic how the GOP, which used to hate communism, is now the party of a centrally-planned economy.
Such a tough guy. Telling Microsoft to pay its power bill. Thinking that other electricity users have been paying Microsoft's power bill this past year. Wow, that's really coming down hard on big tech! Such a brilliant approach to economics. Why didn't anyone think of this before? Must not have been the chosen one. /s
When did the Republican Party become the centralized authority?
Remember when Republicans said they wanted "small government"?
Trump isn't trying to wield any authority, he's shaking them down for bribe money
Exceptions will be made for companies that bribe him of course.
I believe that shit when I see it. 99.999% of everything that comes out of his mouth never happens
Data centers are already starting to be required to cover their own costs due to local legislation catching up. This clown is saying it now so when they do it he claims credit. Next week he’ll declare cars should have some form of occupant restraints.
Pure horseshit
Yeah, okay, but legislation is required for anything to actually happen. Otherwise it might as well be me demanding it
Wait, they don't? Don't they pay their electric bills for their servers and facilities?
So, let me see if I have this straight. There are gobs of energy projects in the works... infrastructure improvements, distribution improvements, wind turbines, solar, etc.
Trump cancels it because he is a fragile little snowflake of a man who is butthurt that Biden signed that bill. He cancels those projects. Then, he wonders why there isn't more power generation available, and wonders why there is a shortage, with the accompanying price spikes to consumers.
With thinking like that, it's no wonder all of his businesses fail.
Just because a data center “pays for its electricity” doesn’t mean there’s zero risk to ratepayers. It comes down to rate design and who bears the fixed costs of all the new generation/transmission the utility has to build to serve that load.
If the utility spends $X billion on new plants + transmission, those are mostly fixed costs that get recovered over decades through rates (often embedded in the $/kWh).
First question: are those costs spread across all customers, or is there a dedicated/industrial rate (or contract tariff) that makes the data center pay for the infrastructure it drives? If it’s the former, ratepayers absolutely take on risk, because they’re subsidizing the buildout needed for a single large customer.
Even if there is a special rate for the data center, the next risks still exist: what if the data center doesn’t consume as much as forecast (lower utilization, efficiency improvements, lower growth, etc.)? Now the utility has built assets expecting a certain revenue stream, and that shortfall has to be recovered somehow.
And the big one: what if the data center boom turns into a bubble and projects get delayed, scaled back, or shut down before the utility recovers its investment? That’s classic stranded asset risk — and in regulated utility land, stranded costs often end up getting socialized unless the contract is airtight (take-or-pay, minimum demand charges, exit fees, credit support, etc.).
So yes, data centers pay for electricity. But unless the PUC forces strong contracts and cost allocation rules, ratepayers can still get stuck holding the bag.
Blah, blah, blah, blah
Oddly enough POTUS "demanding" companies pay power costs is not how our system of governance works.
Levy taxes on energy hungry tech giants. Fund the IRS so they can go after wealthy tax cheats, or GTFO.
The man slinging execitive orders doesn't have one for this...
I am here once again to explain that this isnt real. If he is just talking that doesnt mean he actually achieved anything.
Generally if its malevolent the chances of it happening do go up.
What about the Epstein Files?
I hear there is some damning stuff in there for Trump. This has to be super embarrassing for Trump. I hope he doesn't do anything to distract from those documents.
That's what this is trying to distract from.
Correct. So don’t get distracted. Don’t be Bannons little bitch.
OR... hear me out.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ POTUS could have an energy policy not focused on COAL and OIL! But focused on delivering more power plants and of course renewables that actually cost less and are much faster to install.
Stop being Silly. /s
This is a way to transfer tech money to coal mines.
More demands like this are just posturing, for political advantage, for positions that go nowhere, yet create insider trading opportunities for him and his cronies.
Umm
I thought he said electricity prices were down?
600%
He did, but he lies a lot.
He wants the tech giants to pay the power costs. But he wants them to pay it to him personally. Preferably in Trump-coin.
So let the tech giants underwrite more solar farms, wind farms, grid batteries and transmission lines. I don't see a problem except Donald doesn't like solar or wind.
I feel so dirty, having agreed with both an oil exec and now Donald in the same week.
But it's not a particularly high bar. Tech giants should absolutely be paying for their power.
I think a fair outlook to have on those rare occasions when Trump makes an agreeable point is that talk is cheap and he is such a corrupt dullard that you just can’t trust him to properly follow through.
Which oil exec?
https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/1qb3j39/president_donald_trump_threatens_to_freeze/
He has no power to effectuate that.
You don't understand. When Trump makes a "Truth" Social post, it immediately becomes law. It's really amazing. /s