A lot of these types of AI complaints feel like blaming a pothole for cracking your windshield in half even though you've been driving around with it full of chips and micro cracks for years. It's certainly exacerbated the issue to a point where it's impossible to ignore now but the warning signs have been there for years- utilities and municipalities failing to secure power and water resources for future residents, companies engaging in mass layoffs only for the stock prices to climb. AI adoption aggravated the symptoms, the root causes remain the same.
This is an interesting problem. I have been wanting to dig deeper on some of the complaints around water and power. This one is unique though.<p>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.
Related coverage without invoking the AI bogeyman:<p>"Liberty Utilities needs to replace 75% of Tahoe power supply as NV Energy deal ends soon"<p><a href="https://mynews4.com/news/local/liberty-utilities-needs-to-replace-75-of-tahoe-power-supply-as-nv-energy-deal-ends-soon" rel="nofollow">https://mynews4.com/news/local/liberty-utilities-needs-to-re...</a>
This is like the movie Chinatown, where people were fighting over water, but now it's all about electricity.<p>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.
That’s how I read it too. Liberty alongside constituents had 20 years to figure it out.<p>Data centers are just the new shock titles that people eat up.
I've noticed there's a pattern of behavior with folks living in the forested parts of California where they expect everyone else to subsidize their impractical choice on where to put a house.<p>Extreme wildfire risks? let everyone else shoulder the cost, don't deny our fire insurance.<p>Power delivery infra costs (and associated risks, see wildfires)? don't make us actually pay for this, we're all in this together guys!
Eh, not really.<p>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.<p>Now folks are wailing about the terrible AI come for our electricity and how awful the burden of the upgrades are.<p>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.
> When the upgrades were for solar they were good, when upgrades are for AI they're bad.<p>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>It's almost like people just want to complain about anything associated with something they don't like regardless of relevance.</i><p>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.
It's weird to read an article about how AI is ruining Lake Tahoe, with a map illustrating the problem, when the map itself has the world's most generic "100% generated by Claude" UI ever.<p>I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the article using the Claude map. It's just deeply funny somehow.
I'd love for us to get away from this trope of ever-increasing umbrella categories that you are discouraged from criticizing if you participate in it, very commonly marked by usage of the term "funny"/"hilarious" to imply hypocrisy.<p>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.<p>"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 <i>anything</i> and omit the complication of reality.<p>And people <i>are</i> 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.
My read is<p>People complain about AI in public, use it heavily in private, complain about datacenters in public, slam their fists about usage limits in private.<p>In short, typical human behavior, want to have their cake and eat it too.
I'd rather the AI providers bear the cost of the externalities they inflict on the world.<p>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.
It’s like using social media to spread your message about how social media is bad and addictive.<p>You don’t really have another option unless you want to ostracize yourself from the society you’re trying to change.
On mobile the map prevents the user from scrolling down, you need to drag the padding area instead. Google maps embed doesn't have this issue as it requires two fingers to pan.
"Breaking: Smartphone producers known to rely on slave labor keep doing it. Posted from my iPhone"
Good. I don't think any electricity should be used for homes. It's wastes resources on people who will soon be economically unviable, and really constrains the data center build-out.
just as a thought experiment, say you're an entrepreneur, how would you solve this problem?<p>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.
This isn't a problem that can be solved by a clever entrepreneur. This is what government is for. When you have a shared resource that everyone needs, government is the best option for making sure its distribution is fair.<p>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.<p>The result is their power costs 1/2 as much as all the surrounding cities that have PG&E.
I was actually going to disagree on first glance but I absolutely agree with this.<p>Transmission has no business edge, you will gain the best economies of scale by having the city (or larger regional) manage it.<p>Free-market works on the generation side because as prices change, producers can decide to build out more capacity or innovate to gain and edge. I don’t think in single monopoly constructs the PG&Es of the world have incentive to innovate and properly serve the market.
I'd come up with a variety of ways to interfere with the placement of datacenters, and I'd sell them as a service to people who don't want a datacenter to interfere with their access to water or electricity. This would be, hopfully, absurd enough to make the government realize that they need to step in and make my business model irrelevant.
I still think decoupling generation from transmission is part of the problem and I don’t know if I love the construct of a single legislated monopoly.<p>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.<p>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.
Nuclear has a ton of VC interest right now. Or the robinhood dude with his space beaming stuff.<p>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.
become a politician and make electricity a public resource, as it should be
Entrepreneurs know exactly how to solve this issue: panels, batteries, and wires. But it isn't so simple when you face 20 years of permitting between BLM, USFS, tribes, states, counties, cities, and individual litigation. If you want an example of how bad this is look at the permitting timeline for SunZia in New Mexico and its transmission line to California.<p>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.
It will be hilarious if Google built a data center in Nevada only to run Incline Village out of power (where Sergey Brin pretends to live as a tax dodge).
> where Sergey Brin pretends to live as a tax dodge<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Power should be a public utility, just like water and sewage.
You can make a reasonable case for transmission and distribution to be a government operated public utility. But we need aggressive private industry competition on the generation and storage side in order to prevent shortages.
In the US, power is a public utility. And regulated as such. The providers can be private though and depends a lot on the location.<p>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.
That is not 100% true though. In Burbank, CA the power is city owned.<p><a href="https://www.burbankwaterandpower.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.burbankwaterandpower.com/</a>
In the bay area, Santa Clara has city owned power, and residents pay something like a third of what the rest of the bay area does per kilowatt hour.<p>Part of the inspiration for why SF is trying to kick out PGE and have municipal power.
SVP delivers over 90% of their energy to commercial customers, making it a bit of a special case. However it does prove the hypothesis that large-scale consumers tend to lower, not raise, the local retail price for energy.<p>As for SF, there is no real sense in which they are trying to kick out PG&E. While there is and always has been a vocal group of SF residents who want a free pony, when it comes down to paying the bills SF has voted in 12 separate elections to <i>not</i> establish a municipal utility. They have a demonstrated history of failure to invest in their own utilities stretching back 100 years.
I didn’t say it was 100% true and there are exceptions.<p>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.<p>Now I know and it’s 1/7 or about 15% of Americans have government or community owned power. [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.publicpower.org/public-power" rel="nofollow">https://www.publicpower.org/public-power</a>
That there are city owned utilities doesn't seem to refute any of prepend's statement.<p>> In the US, power is a public utility.<p>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.<p>> And regulated as such.<p>I expect Burbank W&P is regulated by the CPUC, same as other power utilities that operate in California.<p>> The providers can be private though and depends a lot on the location.<p>Many providers are private; this one isn't, and it depends on the location.<p>> 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.<p>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.<p>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.
Palo Alto's power is city owned as well. I think we're building out fiber too.<p>Public infrastructure shouldn't be private. Imagine the nightmare of privately owned roads and highways.
A somewhat more prominent example of this model would be Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Concord, MA, has a municipal power company and a municipal isp. I <i>think</i> they run a power plant, but I know they maintain the transmission lines.
Private companies can operate more efficiently offering better service and competitive pricing. How do you not know that privatization is <i>the</i> solution? /s
Northern Nevada would be such an obvious place to build out large amounts of solar energy as well
Same content: <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-50-000-lake-tahoe-170925969.html" rel="nofollow">https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-50-000-lake-tahoe-1709...</a><p>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.
I see that a sibling comment beat me to it, but "Libertarian separatists"? They're well-organized separatists given they're spread across, what, a couple dozen states? It's quite the narrative you've spun, and it would be almost as interesting if it were true.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Power_%26_Utilities" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Power_%26_Utilities</a>
Your backstory is complete nonsense.<p>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.
Biosacks will be pushed to the margins as more GDP share is created by tokens and corporations are able to lobby for votes.