Customers could pay for data centers’ energy costs without reform

In some advanced economies, electricity infrastructure and the cost of public services are experiencing structural changes due to artificial demand promoted by the intelligence of data centers.

In the process, US consumers could be paying higher public services due to the cost of change from the sector to consumers, they warned of a last article of the Harvard Electricity Law initiative.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, residents may experience higher wholesale prices in the light of a reform proposes to the electricity market that would favor data centers that take advantage of renewable energy.

As price groups arise, the regulation and reform of the energy network will take the center of the stage to manage energy prices and meet changing energy needs.

Special contracts between public services and data centers are one of the ways in which the highest costs associated with data centers can be transferred to consumers of any day, he identified a report of Harvard’s electricity law initiative in March.

These contracts “allow an individual consumer to take the service in conditions and terms that are not otherwise avia anyone else.” In other words, they can be used to change the costs of data centers to consumers due to subjectivity and complexity in the accounting practices of these contracts, according to the report.

Moreoover, the Public Services Commission approves special contracts, but tend to undergo “opaque regulatory processes” that hinder the evaluation of whether costs have moved from data centers in the consumer.

To remedy this, the report recommended that regulators harden the supervision of special contracts or completely eliminate the issue and opt for existing tariff practices.

“Unlike a unique special contract that provides each data center for unique terms and conditions, a rate guarantees that all data centers pay under the same terms and that the impact of new customs consults the complete image of the cost of the public services company.

Jonathan Koomey, an energy and information technology researcher, competence with the need for data centers to pay according to their use of the energy network.

“The key point, in my opinion, is that highly profitable companies that impose network costs with large new loads if the costs created by these new loads,” Koomey told CNBC.

Beyond the companies and regulators of public services, “the auditors in the regulatory process of public services also play a fundamental role,” said Koomey.

The auditors may include a specific group of components or a large commercial or industrial client that participates in the procedures. They can pose problems related to customer service and affordability and, ultimately, allow commissions to listen to a large group of interested parties.

“They can often deepen more than overloaded regulators in the projections and technical details and reveal key problems that were still arising in regulatory processes,” Koomey added.

Another factor that affects public services prices is the excessive development of energy infrastructure.

Public and pipeline companies in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia are planning an “important construction of natural gas infrastructure in the next 15 years”, Potentiax based on an overestimation of the economy and the financial analysis of data data forecasts in January.

Proactive decisions by public services and regulators are necessary to prevent taxpayers from being “in the hook” for excessive construction infrastructure, said the IEEFA report.

Policy formulators in all states have adopted a large number of measures to encourage, stop and regulate the influx of the development of data centers, from fiscal exemptions to legislative bills, with an approach to guarantee that consumers of non -data centers do not have undue costs, according to a report by the Gibson Dunn Data Centers and the Digital Infrastructure Practice Practice group.

In the United Kingdom, data centers and consumers face a different price challenge in the midst of government plans to transform the country’s electricity market into a decarbonized, profitable and safe electricity system.

The zonal pricing scheme that is being explored under the government’s revision of electricity market arrangements would mark a change of uniform prices to a divided electricity market. According to the new framework, consumers in different geographical areas would be subject to different wholesale prices of electricity prices are based on the marginal cost of satisfying demand in that place.

The Modeling of the consulting firm Lane Clark and Peacock suggests that the north of Scotland would experience lower prices wholesalers due to its high renewable penetration and a relatively low demand.

The rest of the United Kingdom, which represents 97% of the national electricity demand, is ready to see an increase in wholesale prices of the current national prices model.

The impact on retail prices is still murky.

“It is not clear How May impact retail prices as WHO. Daresh and Daresh, and Darh, and Darh, and Darh, and Darh and Darhini, and Darhini, and Dary, and and Darhini, and Dary, and Dary, and Dary, and Dary, and Dary, and Darihini, and Dary, and Darihini, and Darihini, and Darihini, and Darihini, and Dari, and Dari, and Dari, and Dari, and Dari Lane Clark Peacock energy transition, LCP Delta.

The nud is the Department of Energy Security of the United Kingdom and Net Zero.

While technology companies appear aboard The lowest costs that zonal prices can offer, according to the investigation of the groups of experts backed by Amazon, OpenAi and Anthrope, if the data centers will benefit from the zonal prices will depend on their type of operations, according to Hollister and Darshini.

Those enhancedly suitable for the zonal price include facilities of data centers that handle the workloads that can change over time or location, they said.

The training of AI for deep learning models is one of it. These workloads can be programmed to turn off the hours of the time when electricity prices can be lower and synchronized with periods of wind or solar energy surplus, which would reduce costs and relieve the congestion of the network.

Similarly, data centers that do not need to be close to the main urban centers or end users, such as those that support Hipperscala training, cloud data storage facilities and large -scale or scientific computing centers can be in the region of renewable generation generation and low local demand, Hollister and Darshini.

However, “not all the workloads of AI are flexible real -time inference tasks, such as those used in chatbots, fraud detection or autonomous vehicles, require immediate processing and would not benefit from the change of time,” they added.

Applications sensitive to latency, such as financial trade and real -time transmission that require proximity to users, would also find the “less viable” zonal price.

Zonal price defenders point to the benefits of reducing the need to move energy to long distances.

But with the plans of the National Energy System operator to increase the capacity of the network and connect more wind on the high seas, focus on the infrastructure of the network is important “, and the zonal prices won eliminate those requirements,” according to Hollister and Darshini.

“It is not just the data centers that will need additional capacity in the network, it is probably the highest profile, but the load of EV will change the network. To the national network, an organization has been an Abong researcher in sustainable computer science, he told CNBC.

The demands on the energy network raised by the electrification of vehicles are a shared challenge in the United States and the United Kingdom

In the US, electric vehicles will constitute more than half or all new cars sold by 2030 and are ready to exert considerable tension in a aged energy grid system.

While the electricity consumption of US data centers is growing at an increasing rate, a report by the National Lawrence Berkeley laboratory published in December pointed out that it is developing against a much greater electricity demand that is expected to happen, few decades, few, few, few, very few, few, few, few, Vewte, Vewte, VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEW. VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTE VEWTEWTE, VEWTEWTE, VEWTE, VEWTE, VEWTE, VEWTE, VEWTE, VEWTE, VEWTE VEWTE, VEWTE, VEEWTE POC, VEWTE, VEEWTE VEWTE. industry electrification and buildings.

Given this, the infrastructural and regulatory reforms that arise from the management of the data centers would be useful for an imminent era of change of electricity demand, Mytton and other researchers said.