NC Newsline: Data centers threaten energy affordability, NC task force says. “Data centers account for about 80% of Duke Energy’s projected energy demand, according to a report from Gov. Josh Stein’s North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force. The report found that data centers have ‘uniquely high energy needs’ compared to traditional users like manufacturing, chemicals, life sciences, food […]

I have been working on taking the energy data that my #SmartMeter sends to #BrightEnergy and to show a nice web page of the results.

Still very much a work in process, but I am happy enough with it for now.

#ScottishPower #HomeDashboard #Energy #EnergyUsage #Dash #SMET2

Capital B News: A Rural S.C. County Quietly Approved a $2B Data Center During the Winter Storm. “As a rare winter storm bore down on South Carolina, bringing conditions that historically paralyze the state for days, local officials in a rural county quietly pushed through a massive $2.4 billion data center without most residents knowing it was even on the table.”

The Register: Amazon’s European datacenter buildout blows a breaker as grid connection wait list hits 7 years. “AWS has moved quickly to flood the European continent with its elastic compute fabric, but while it may take two years to bring a new datacenter online, securing power for the facilities can take up to seven years, Pamela MacDougall, who heads energy markets and regulation for AWS […]

Berkeley News: This Berkeley professor is exposing the hidden physical toll of our digital world. “In her forthcoming book, Earthy Algorithms: A Materialist Reading of Digital Literature, [Professor Alex] Saum-Pascual argues that digital tools like generative AI mask the messy reality of the internet — the massive energy, hardware and human labor it requires — to trick us into thinking we […]

TechSpot: Data centers are now the fastest-growing part of US construction. “New data from FMI Corp., a Raleigh-based construction forecasting firm, shows spending on data center construction will climb 23% in 2026, even as office, hotel, apartment, and warehouse development slows sharply. That growth will bring the sector’s share of total nonresidential building to more than 6%, compared with […]

New York Times: State and Federal Lawmakers Want Data Centers to Pay More for Energy. This link goes to a gift article. “Governors, senators and even some tech executives increasingly agree that the companies behind data centers need to pay more for electricity and to address the strain they are causing on the grid. But there is little consensus about how much they ought to pay.”

Ars Technica: Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers. “On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a new initiative called ‘Community-First AI Infrastructure’ that commits the company to paying full electricity costs for its data centers and refusing to seek local property tax reductions.”

The Register: Ignore rosy datacenter expansion projections – there isn’t enough power. “A looming shortage of electrical power is set to constrain datacenter expansion, potentially leaving many industry growth forecasts looking overly optimistic. In its latest report, ‘Five Predictions for 2026,’ Uptime Institute says that power will become the defining constraint on datacenter growth in 2026 […]

Engadget: Meta announces a slew of nuclear energy agreements. “Meta has announced three new agreements to purchase nuclear power for its AI infrastructure as well as the Prometheus supercluster, a 1-gigawatt data center being built in Ohio.”

Tom’s Hardware: U.S. electricity grid stretches thin as data centers rush to turn on onsite generators — Meta, xAI, and other tech giants race to solve AI’s insatiable power appetite. “According to SemiAnalysis, electricity loads of tens of gigawatts have been requested in the state of Texas alone, but only a little over a gigawatt has received approval, signalling that the power grid may be […]

Tom’s Hardware: Russia cracks down on ‘illegal’ cryptomining with prison terms up to five years — Kremlin will begin prosecuting in 2027. “Russia is preparing to move cryptocurrency mining from a regulatory gray zone into the core of its criminal law, with penalties ranging from fines to prison terms of up to five years. The draft legislation is expected in 2026, reports CNews.”

CNBC: Data center deals hit record $61 billion in 2025 amid construction frenzy. “Global stocks sold off in November as worries of an AI-fueled bubble persisted. But S&P Global reported that more than $61 billion has flowed into the data center market this year, up slightly from $60.8 billion last year, amid what it called a ‘global construction frenzy.'”

Construction Dive: As EPA moves to fast-track data centers, some cities are moving to slow them down. “In their letter to Congress, the environmental organizations stated that tripling the number of data centers in the next five years would require as much electricity as about 30 million households, as much water as about 18.5 million households and contribute to escalating electricity costs. […]

The Register: Datacenters are hoarding grid power just in case, says Uptime Institute. “The advisory body found that datacenter power use remains largely constant, with major demand changes typically coming from business expansion. Operators routinely reserve excess capacity for potential future growth, blocking other users from that allocation even though it sits unused.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/10/the-register-datacenters-are-hoarding-grid-power-just-in-case-says-uptime-institute/

Gizmodo: All the Bad Things That Can Happen When You Generate a Sora Video. “The Sora app is powered by Sora 2, an AI model—and a rather breathtaking one to be honest. It can create videos that run the gamut of quality from from banal to profoundly satanic. It is a black hole of energy and data, and also a distributor of highly questionable content. Like so many things these days, using Sora […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/01/gizmodo-all-the-bad-things-that-can-happen-when-you-generate-a-sora-video/

CNBC: AI data center ‘frenzy’ is pushing up your electric bill — here’s why. “The data centers that power the artificial intelligence revolution are driving up electricity prices for households — and price relief may not be coming anytime soon, according to energy experts. Residential retail electricity prices in September were up 7.4%, to about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, according […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/30/cnbc-ai-data-center-frenzy-is-pushing-up-your-electric-bill-heres-why/

CNBC: Why rural Wisconsin is blocking the AI data center boom: ‘Horses are skittish’. “The village of Caledonia, Wisconsin, sandwiched between Chicago and Milwaukee along Lake Michigan, is dotted with corn and soybean fields, single-story homes and traffic signs alerting drivers to horseback riders. In September, when Microsoft, the world’s third most-valuable company, sought to rezone […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/27/why-rural-wisconsin-is-blocking-the-ai-data-center-boom-horses-are-skittish-cnbc/

University of California Riverside: Smarter AI processing, cleaner air. “A study from UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, however, proposes a solution to this growing problem. It outlines a method to dramatically reduce the pollution caused by AI processing in large data centers—while also extending the life of the hardware doing the work. No existing system […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/23/university-of-california-riverside-smarter-ai-processing-cleaner-air/

TechCrunch: Rising data center electricity use risks blackouts during winter storms. “The explosive growth of data centers could threaten the stability of the electrical grid this winter, according to an industry overseer. Across North America, demand for electricity this winter is expected to be 2.5% higher than last year for a total of 20 gigawatts, the North American Electric Reliability […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/22/techcrunch-rising-data-center-electricity-use-risks-blackouts-during-winter-storms/