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#power#don#more#public#utility#energy#problem#transmission#government#data
Discussion (104 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
1. Somehow the public is always left holding the bag for increased transmission costs despite the cause of the increase being a single (or short list) of outliers.
2. The residential public, as is tradition, is always asked to scale down for industrial demand.
How can we imagine expanding a system that results in both of these outcomes? That, to me, seems to be the thing to fix first.
This is now the endpoint we are bouldering towards: the bottom 90% increasingly have nothing left to steal or exploit. And just like an algal bloom that eventually runs out of oxygen and dies, this is where this system and our society unravels.
The solution is having the consumer pay for the externalities when they use the product. But this would make AI so much more expensive. When you use AI you are exploiting other people. Just keep that in mind.
Externalities don't exist in anarchic systems, because there is no hierarchical separation between producer and consumer. You can't push off costs to some members of the community when they have equal power to retaliate in kind, and there is no incentive to do so.
"Liberty Utilities needs to replace 75% of Tahoe power supply as NV Energy deal ends soon"
https://mynews4.com/news/local/liberty-utilities-needs-to-re...
If AI is the cause of these data centers, why is it not the bogey man? This sounds like you personally want to use AI with out acknowledging the externalities and the burden your use of AI puts on your fellow citizens.
the "growing demand" is the AI datacenters (the linked story goes into detail). it's the direct result, so while it might feel soothing that this other story doesnt actually mention "AI" it's mostly just an omission.
the town is already in the process of expanding their infrastructure to get power from elsewhere so things will be "fine", but this is a terrible time to have a government that is rabidly cancelling non-fossil energy projects as fast as possible.
my post is more about how we really need to be seeking energy sources from all possible corners, and we have a government that is literally paying billions to contractors to cancel wind projects.
Doesn’t read much like a problem so much with data center growth as it does with Liberty mismanaging their business/assets. For almost 20 years liberty acted as nothing more than a transmission operator with very weak agreements on power generation. They should have been figuring out this problem long ago.
Private equity is getting into utilities because it's a captive market, the service is highly inelastic and the owners are generally allowed to push all capex onto customer bills without recourse.
So your "interesting problem" is simply not seeing this as what it is: profit extraction.
I would bet most coops have fairly concrete contracts on generation. This one is unique because they were using usage from a grid they have no standing in. Weak agreement, folks should have been figuring it out 20 years ago.
It sounds like Lake Tahoe residents kicked the can down the road and didn't care about electricity for so long that now they have to pay the piper. I think it's entire just that they have to bear the costs of their own electricity.
I don't think I can claim credit because I'm sure I wasn't the only one, but it took 3 or 4 emails to a couple of legislator offices to get some policy changes. In my case it might've just been small enough (no news coverage, basically only a small number of people were aware of a regulatory memo), the first time or two they just kicked the can down the road deferring the implementation, until ultimately they reversed course. And my part was just laying out a very strong case for why the particular situation was unfair, how many people would be impacted (voters), etc. Nothing confrontational, just laying out the argument.
It's not easy identifying whose who because even the most pragmatic and honest politicians have to pay lip service to hot button topics. You just have to keep track of names and relationships over the years.
Make politics local again. (MPLA?)
Data centers are just the new shock titles that people eat up.
Extreme wildfire risks? let everyone else shoulder the cost, don't deny our fire insurance.
Power delivery infra costs (and associated risks, see wildfires)? don't make us actually pay for this, we're all in this together guys!
Few years ago everybody was talking about the inadequacies of our aging electricity distribution infrastructure and how it was a shame it wasn't being fixed and the risks it entails.
Now folks are wailing about the terrible AI come for our electricity and how awful the burden of the upgrades are.
When the upgrades were for solar they were good, when upgrades are for AI they're bad. It's almost like people just want to complain about anything associated with something they don't like regardless of relevance.
Do you look at every issue in this 50,000 foot view with no nuance or even basic details, or is just certain ones?
I've noticed that we don't hear a lot about the EV boogyman taking down our electric grid now that AI has come to town.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the article using the Claude map. It's just deeply funny somehow.
The world is big and complicated. "AI" is the biggest umbrella category we have ever seen in modern civilization. There's nothing inherently wrong with criticizing AI while using AI. There's nothing inherently wrong with criticizing a country while living in that country. There's nothing inherently wrong with criticizing a company while using that company's service. Etc.
"Hypocrisy!" is a favorite accusation of those with the same-but-opposite bias as the one they are calling out. It's the easiest attack to construct, because you can point to anything and omit the complication of reality.
And people are hypocritical! That's part of why it's such an easy thing to claim. But it's also the reason you need a stronger argument than just stating the claim. You need to separate yourself from the endless sea of low-quality internet snipes that rely on simple accusations of hypocrisy.
It's why when I bitch about the UK, I get told if I don't like it why don't I leave.
It's like my dudes fail to grasp to concept of loving something and wanting it to be even better, to solve minor quibbles with it.
People complain about AI in public, use it heavily in private, complain about datacenters in public, slam their fists about usage limits in private.
In short, typical human behavior, want to have their cake and eat it too.
You don’t really have another option unless you want to ostracize yourself from the society you’re trying to change.
If the cost to users is reasonable with that added burden I'll happily pay it. If it is not viable without passing costs on society, then they should not be in business.
https://truthout.org/art/mister-gotcha/
But in reality, there are many many ways to engage in society, some more or less ethical/moral than others, and one is free to criticize individual choices.
Even if we consider something like social media, there is still a range of choices other than fully engaging in social media and rejecting all social media. There are attempts to use it responsible, limiting and curating use to less harmful versions while attempt to get most of the benefit, while still postulating that the overall effect of the average use case of social media is harming society.
It feels a lot like saying that, since it is impossible to live a perfectly ethical/moral life, ethics and morals can be completely ignored without regard for what options one does have available to them.
But then again, democracy absolutely fails in that you have to already be rich to be a politician most of the time and people tend to vote extremely tribally by party rather than on policies (lest they accidentally vote for the wrong party!)
The truth is in many democracies none of the parties are prepared to do what needs to be done most of the time, nor is the average voter prepared to accept any form of compromise or abstain from uninformed, knee-jerk and tribally motivated reactions to proposed policy.
Aka we only have our dumb selves to blame.
Or do you have something else in mind?
To me it's a classic "commons" problem. All our wealth in the end comes from extracting common resources and "making the best" of it.
Whether "the best" is to sustain population levels or to maximize private capital is a political question.
As of now, demanding things like free access to clean water is considered ideological and misguided by many people, maybe even "extreme".
What I see as a valuable point is that federal governments with subsidies that "distort" markets for public goods and externality regulation, worsen the "tragedy of the commons".
Explaining many things to a naive person, or a kid, boils down to this type of issue, you can even extend it to nation states.
Without experience of violence, most people would intuitively understand that a "competition" between governments is problematic.
Same issue, different undertones: tax havens.
To be fair, it's not as if they didn't often try to build more power.
As it turns out, most people don't like having a massive fuel-burning power plant near their homes. Now they don't even like having solar panel fields near their homes. These people often are the same kind to show up at city hall or public utility board meetings and raise a fuss.
Now, are they doing it and returning to houses that take a crapload (I do believe that is the technical term) of energy to heat and cool because of out-of-date windows, insulation, and HVAC controls? Maybe. Are they sometimes also the same people who hated the idea of phasing out incandescent bulbs? Probably. But either way, that power source ain't getting built.
> and water resources
Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Des Moines, Milwaukee, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Columbus all sit on major rivers or massive freshwater lakes and aren't in a desert climate. We could do something with that.
The NIMBY problem is very real especially for an area filled with resorts and vacation homes, but when you have 20 years to figure it out I think there has to be more than that at play. They're ultimately going to fix the problem with a transmission line anyways.
“NV Energy is building Greenlink West, a 525-kV, $4.2 billion transmission line from Las Vegas to Yerington, expected online in May 2027. Schwarzrock said Liberty would be “first in the waiting line” when Greenlink opens, giving it access to a wider pool of energy providers. But that timeline matches the contract deadline exactly, leaving almost no margin for error. About 70% of the project’s costs will be borne by Southern Nevada customers. But this is nothing new, at least according to NV Energy.”
It's not just Brin who lives there. The median wealth of that town is at least 10x everywhere around it. It's the closest city in Nevada to the Bay Area. Back before California changed the law, if you had stock options you earned in CA and then moved to NV before you sold them, you could avoid paying income tax. Or if you sold your company.
I know multiple people who moved to Incline right before vesting or selling. They would come back to the Bay Area each weekend to see their wife and kids and work remotely during the week. As long as they spent more than 1/2 their time in NV they didn't have to pay CA tax.
CA has since closed that loophole -- if you earn it in CA they will come for the tax even if you live in another state when you sell it. But for the last 20+ years, it was a tax strategy that a lot of people used.
The vagaries of American politics allow for failure and then bailout as a mechanism for these sorts of situations but I think we can see the writing on the wall. 50k residents at an average million dollars a resident is $50 b so it is not quite possible to have a buyout so I see why we just allow for the decline.
But any more we allow for the place to be inhabited, the greater the risk. Otherwise it’s just an incredibly regressive use of our resources: taxing a lot of working age people in the more urbanized areas to fund wealthy retirees in the forest.
The current tide of California politics favors that and we can do it so long as our economic productivity is powered by tech but a time will come after and it’s better now to do this than after when we will find ourselves unable to sustain productive capacity.
whether it AI, Data Centers, EVs...I'm seeing this problem more and more, we need more energy/power. I'm curious to see what others think are possible viable solutions.
We already know how to solve this: make transmission owned by the government, make generation free-market. Cities do this already. The city of Santa Clara owns all the transmission, and then buys power on the open market along with generating themselves.
The result is their power costs 1/2 as much as all the surrounding cities that have PG&E.
Transmission has no business edge, you will gain the best economies of scale by having the city (or larger regional) manage it.
Free-market works on the generation side because as prices change, producers can decide to build out more capacity or innovate to gain an edge. I don’t think a single monopoly construct, like the PG&Es of the world, have incentive to innovate and properly serve the market.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus...
In this specific case, Liberty and constituents should have come up with a plan on the first contract term for generation. Maybe it meant spinning up their own generation plant within CA or NV.
It’s not a popular idea here but I still think energy markets can help solve this problem. If you have multiple producers and a market rate for electricity you can more quickly incentivize new generation and innovation compared to the single operator monopolies that exist.
I think anything you can do to add to the energy mix is worthwhile atm. Does America produce any domestic solar panels? I’m talking wafers not assembly.
Gas pipelines don't have the same problem because the federal government exercises centralized permitting and eminent domain powers for fossil fuels under a 1938 law, and there is no corresponding statute for electric lines.
Personally, I wouldn’t trust my city or county to operate a power plant and transmission lines. I’m happy that power is regulated by my state as a natural monopoly.
https://www.burbankwaterandpower.com/
Part of the inspiration for why SF is trying to kick out PGE and have municipal power.
I don’t know the true distribution, but I’d wager the vast majority of the US is served by either a corporation or some non-government organization.
Now I know and it’s 1/7 or about 15% of Americans have government or community owned power. [0]
[0] https://www.publicpower.org/public-power
> In the US, power is a public utility.
A city owned utility is both a public utiliy because it offers a utility service to the public and a public utility because it is municipally owned.
> And regulated as such.
I expect Burbank W&P is regulated by the CPUC, same as other power utilities that operate in California.
> The providers can be private though and depends a lot on the location.
Many providers are private; this one isn't, and it depends on the location.
> Personally, I wouldn’t trust my city or county to operate a power plant and transmission lines. I’m happy that power is regulated by my state as a natural monopoly.
This is, like prepend's opinion, man. I assume they are truthfully expressing their trust and happiness. Even if they lived within the service area of Burbank W&P or another municipal power utility, they might not trust it.
As to power being a natural monopoly, it's hard to tell exactly given that it exists in a highly regulated market; but I don't know of any US markets where there is a choice for electrical distribution. You get the utility that serves your property, or you get to pay them to build their network to serve your property, or you get no utility power (and in some locations, no certiticate of occupancy). I'm sure there's some exceptions such as a lot that stradles the service areas or a lot with a high availability use that requirea feeds from multiple substations and it makes more sense to wire to a substation from a neighboring utility. And there's the legacy DC power networks in some old cities. But generally, there's no overbuilding of competing distribution lines; unlike say telecom where many areas have at least two of copper telephone, copper coax cable, and fiber telecom; and often several vendors if you're willing to pay commercial rates for cabling.
Public infrastructure shouldn't be private. Imagine the nightmare of privately owned roads and highways.
TL;DR Libertarian separatists, who went so far as to name their utility "Liberty Utilities", organized their utility in 2009 under a temporary agreement with Nevada, which was extended twice, and now after almost two decades of failing to invest in their own generating assets they will be deprioritized by their ex-partner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Power_%26_Utilities
Liberty Utilities has nothing to do with libertarian separatists. It's a brand name of Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp, a boring Canadian infrastructure conglomerate that buys regulated water, gas, and electric systems across North America. They bought this chunk of rural California grid from NV Energy in 2009. That's it.