> American Electric Power, which owns the line, has proposed a new, higher electricity rate for data centers and cryptocurrency miners that would lock them in as customers for a decade. The companies are balking.
Look at that! Net Neutrality comes to the electrical wire. They could have charged different rates based on industrial/residential or volume but that wouldn't be optimal rent extraction.
This is actually a really great article about the weird contract dynamics of large power customers and the chicken-egg problem of needing commitment for a certain amount of guaranteed spend to justify the cost of servicing them. It has nothing at all to do about AI.
Comparing this to net neutrality just poisons the well when discussing NN. Internet service providers being able to arbitrarily adjust pricing based on data source stifles competition. Is there competition in the power supply industry where a client can pick their source? Well, aside from having their own generation. In this case transfer is the service and if one day huge demand cluster disappears the capacity for it is left to rust.
I don't think your point disagrees with mine. Charging based on demand is fine, requiring take-or-pay contracts when your request requires expensive grid upgrades is fine. Charging more because it's a datacenter as opposed to heavy industry, not fine. That's the part that mirrors NN.
But to directly answer your question, yes there is competition. In most states, Ohio being one of them, you can choose who provides your power generation. And since companies are shopping states for where to build data centers AEP has a lot of competition for delivery.
> American Electric Power, which owns the line, has proposed a new, higher electricity rate for data centers and cryptocurrency miners that would lock them in as customers for a decade. The companies are balking.
Look at that! Net Neutrality comes to the electrical wire. They could have charged different rates based on industrial/residential or volume but that wouldn't be optimal rent extraction.
This is actually a really great article about the weird contract dynamics of large power customers and the chicken-egg problem of needing commitment for a certain amount of guaranteed spend to justify the cost of servicing them. It has nothing at all to do about AI.