If we did, it would be populated by MAGAs who would take bribes to let the power company put ALL the costs on the residential consumers. Except for the wealthy neighborhood. They deserve a break, because they're better.

Somewhere at the energy company is a person or small team responsible for that message. And those are regular people who also are getting fucked in the ass. Carefully crafted to keep their job (shifting the blame away from the utility slightly), while also letting everyone know who's dick it is in their bumbum

but could anyone still explain the reasoning they are trying to make customers believe?

That's the neat part, they don't have to bother with that!

I don’t really get how the fig leaf of “due to data-centers” is even supposed to work.

It let's them increase their extortionary price hike by more, and blame it on a different extortionist.

probably need to build new power plants while the existing ones are in overdrive

they could handle that diffeently, bug fleecing regular joe is more fun

It can depend, also this little snippet doesn't say if it's energy or delivery. Some utilities really like expanding delivery because the projects are revenue, and they don't make much, if any, on the delivery. But in some cases those delivery expansion projects have a long payback time, so they avoid them until they're critical, and also lose if after building the demand they were serving goes down.

It also varies a ton by state (Texas being the most extreme example). As well as, someone noted below, how the energy purchase goes. In my state there's an independent not for profit that is not the utility, and not the energy producer, that just coordinates purchase of power from the broader region (across multiple states). They'll mix whats coming into the grid in the state going "call Ohio and buy XXYY megawatts for ZZ hrs from that coal fire joint". The control room is cool as hell. They seem pretty ethically clean, but purchasing that power is a bidding process (like, real time), and your bid has to be competitive.

Well, in the past (and the present in many places) perpetual unrepayable debts were used as a way to implement slavery without calling it slavery. They call it debt peonage. You know, food for thought.

the more I'm debt you get the more you owe them,

Short term it pads the companies books a bit more by adding an asset on top of the revenue. Medium term it's a perpetual impairment generator. The executives are just planning to cash out before the inevitable happens.

Isn't a kwh the same price for everyone?

Not sure why you'd assume this

Clout. Aura. Bargaining force. Call it whatever you want, really. Corporations are big, they have capital, capital is power. They can hire people to influence politics, pushing for people who are on their side to get elected by funding campaigns, and naturally bribe people on the down low.

Stick, along with the other people served by their provider, most likely don't have the ability to pay people to lobby for them full time. Most people barely have the money to keep their personal economy going, and spend a significant portion of their time just making that happen. As a result, the corporations who are benefiting from this sit on all the power, because they can influence public opinion as well, painting their politics as beneficial to private individuals, even if that's a complete lie.

That is why democracy and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. Workers could band together and claim power, but they're kept in situations where doing that just isn't feasible.

Things won't get better without some kind of revolution. The balance of power is tipped so far in favour of the corporations that no matter how much time or money workers spend (neither of which we have) trying to better things, they'll never get even close to what the corpos can swing with.

If it’s anything like it is here in Victoria (Australia); the price per MWh is recalculated based on supply/demand on a 5 minute basis:

https://www.aemo.com.au/aemo/data/nem/priceanddemand/PRICE_AND_DEMAND_202607_VIC1.csv

That’s because when supply outruns demand, surplus electricity is basically worthless and wholesalers need to pay someone to take it - we have long stretches of time, even during winter, where our domestic solar production saturates the demand, resulting in our Feed-in tariffs (what homes get paid for surplus production) has dropped to 1c/kWh, except for certain edge cases).

The bulk of the cost incurred is due to peak-energy generation (gas turbine, I believe?) ramping up to cover peak evening times.

These costs are aggregated and amortised over total demand, to balance out people’s energy bills.

This has been a bit of a tangent, but I found this interesting when I first learned it, and just wanted to share!

Same as with RAM prices. There is a limited supply and the datacenters are hogging it, possibly willing to pay extra because the entire bubble depends on MORE MORE MORE, or willing to bulk purchase the entire contingent in advance.

Now if you are a power supplier you find yourself in the comfortable position of being financially courted by the datacenter corps, and you have a captured audience of consumers who rely on you supplying them, who you can now justifiably bleed out, and if they cant pay you just sell it to the datacenter after all.

Isn't a kwh the same price for everyone?

Perversely, no. Large industrial users often get a bulk rate that's cheaper than the household rate.

Happy cake day, BTW.

Everyone on the power exchange. Consumers don't pay the exchange price. They pay a premium to the company that transforms exchange power to household power on a virtual sheet of paper.

Definitely a smart move letting those power utilities be privatised, even a regulation forcing cost price power for residents would have been better than full privatisation. I'm so glad my state never got sucked into letting that happen here.

Fortunately, Oregon seems to have figured out how to handle this. This was in my feed, literally right under this post.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/63159063

As the other commenter said, they have a limited supply and are expecting us plebeians to be priced out and go without. It's already happening: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/virginia-county-tells-workers-switch-002400860.html

Let me tell you about my legally required cable.

There's usually usually a power pole near them feeding them with electricity. Shame if something were to happen to it.