A computer Gulf visitor at the PA10 Data Center, run by Equinix Inc. In Paris, France, on Thursday, February 6, 2025.
Bloomberg Bloomberg Gety pictures
In some advanced economies, the electricity infrastructure and the cost of facilities are subject to structural changes due to the demand for artificial intelligence on data centers.
In this process, consumers in the United States can pay the higher facilities bills due to the costs of transferring the sector to consumers, warned the last paper before Harvard Electricity Law Initiative.
Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, the population may face higher prices in light of the proposed reform of the electricity market that would prefer data centers that make fun of renewable energy.
With the emergence of pricing fears, the organization’s reform and the power network reform will occupy the lead center in energy price management and meet the changing energy needs.
Special “complex” contracts
Special contracts between facilities and data center companies are one of the ways in which data centers may be transferred to daily consumers, and has identified a report before Harvard Electricity Law Initiative In March.
Such contracts “allow the individual consumer to take the service under the conditions and conditions that are not available to anyone else.” In other words, it can be used to change costs from databases to consumers due to subjectivity and complexity in accounting practices for these contracts.
Moreover, private contracts are approved by the Public Utilities Committee, but they tend to submit “mysterious organizational operations” that make it difficult to evaluate whether the costs have been transferred from data centers to the consumer.
To treat this, the recommended report recommended an organizer to tighten supervision of special contracts or completely dispose of them and choose current tariff practices.
“Unlike a special contract for one time, each center provides a unique conditions and provisions, the customs tariff guarantees that all data centers pay under the same conditions and that the effect of new customers is processed by looking at the full image of the tool and revenue costs,” according to the report.
Jonathan Kome, a researcher in energy and information technology, agrees with the need for data centers to pay them according to their use of the power network.
“The main point, in my opinion, is that the very profitable companies that impose costs on the network with large new loads should pay the costs created by those new loads,” Komei told CNBC.
In addition to the companies and organizers of the utilities, “those who enter into the organizational process of the utilities play an important role.”
to intervene It can include a specific group of components or a large commercial or industrial customer who participate in the procedures. They may raise problems related to customer service and the ability to withstand costs and ultimately allow commissions to hear them from a wide range of stakeholders.
“They often can dig deeper than the intellectual organizers in expectations and technical details and reveal the main issues that have not yet appeared in organizational procedures,” Kumi added.
Exaggerated infrastructure?
Another factor that affects the prices of facilities is the excessive development of energy infrastructure.
Facilities and pipeline companies in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia are planningThe main structure of the natural gas infrastructure for the next fifteen years,“It is possible to rely on the assessment of the data center download predictions, highlighting a report issued by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in January.
The IEFA report said that proactive decisions are needed by the facilities and organizers to prevent price motives from being “hook” for the exaggerated infrastructure.
Policy makers in all parts of the states have adopted a large number of measures to stimulate, curb and regulate the flow of data center development, from tax exemptions to legislative bills, focusing on ensuring that there are no unnecessary consumers, according to a report presented by the report. Gibson Dan data centers and the digital infrastructure group.
Zonal pricing
In the United Kingdom, data centers and consumers face a different challenge to pricing amid government plans to convert the country’s electricity market into a polished and effective electricity system.
The pricing scheme that is explored under the government Reviewing the electricity market arrangements It would turn away from the unified pricing into the divided electricity market. Under the new framework, consumers in different geographical areas will be subject to different current electricity prices based on the border cost to meet the demand on this site.
Modeling From Consulting Company, Lane Clark and Peacock indicates that northern Scotland will witness a decrease in wholesale prices due to the high renewed penetration and relatively low demand.
The rest of the United Kingdom, which represents 97 % of the national electricity demand, is preparing to see wholesale prices from the current national pricing model.
The impact on retail prices is still mysterious.
“It is not clear how this can affect retail prices because wholesale prices are only one part of the total electricity bill for consumers, and Desnz still needs to make various decisions,” according to joint comments from Sam Hollister, head of energy economics, politics, investment, Dina Darshini, head of the commercial and industrial energy transmission department in Lin Clark, LCP Delta.
Desnz is the UK Energy Security Management and Safi Zero.
Will you benefit from data centers?
While technology companies appear on board with Low costs estimated by the pricing of the regions, based on Intellectual tank research With the support of Amazon, Openai and Anthropor, whether the data centers are actually dependent on benefiting from the pricing of the regions depend on the type of operations, according to Holstister and Darcini.
They said that those who are likely to be suitable for logical pricing include the data center facilities that deal with the work burdens that can be converted in time or site.
Examples of artificial intelligence for deep learning models is one of the examples. These work burdens can be scheduled within hours outside peak times when electricity prices are lower and synchronized with periods of wind or solar energy, which reduces costs and reduces network congestion.
Likewise, data centers that do not need to be close to the main urban centers or the final users-such as those that support superior artificial intelligence training, cloud and widespread data storage or scientific computing centers-from the cheapest electricity when it is located in areas with a renewable generation and low local demand.
However, “not all work burdens of artificial intelligence are flexible-the tasks of inference in actual time, such as those used in chat groups, detection of fraud, or independent vehicles, require immediate treatment and will not benefit from time transfer.”
Sensitive applications for lily capture such as financial trading and broadcasting in actual time requires close users you will also find Zonal pricing “less applicant”.
Enhancing the network infrastructure
Pricing supporters indicate the benefits of reducing the need to transfer energy at long distances.
But with the plans of the national energy system operator to increase the network’s ability and link more marine winds, the focus on the network infrastructure is important, “pricing will not remove these requirements,” according to the structure. Hlester and Darcini.
“Not only the data centers that will need this additional capacity on the network, it is possible that it is the most prominent sites, but the charging of EV will change the network. For the National Network where the organization was talking about the change in the application file from EVS for a very long time,” David Miton, a sustainable computing researcher, told CNBC.
The demands of the power network formed by vehicle electrification are a common challenge across the United States and the United Kingdom
In the United States, Electric cars will form more than half of all new cars that were sold by 2030 He is appointed to put a large strain on the aging network system.
While electricity consumption in American databases is growing at an increasing pace, a report on Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory He indicated in December that this is running against “a much larger electricity request that is expected to occur over the next few decades of a mixture of electric vehicles adoption, manufacturing arrangement, hydrogen use, and industry electrification and buildings.”
Given, the infrastructure and organizational reforms that appear from the Data Center management will be useful for an imminent era of changing the demand for electricity, Metone and his fellow researchers.
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