White House seeks emergency power auction for largest US electric grid(www.reuters.com)
19 pointsby bikenaga22 days ago4 comments
  • hermanzegerman22 days ago
    It's funny how politicians across the world can suddenly fix things when an election is coming up and they fear losing it
    • cyanydeez22 days ago
      huh? 1 paragraph in and this is about data centers being a problem.

      This is about "oh, problems are solved when there's a bunch of lobbiests paid to solve it"

      • hermanzegerman21 days ago
        Then read further

        The White House is seeking caps on the amount existing power plants can charge in the PJM capacity market.

        The agreement would also require data centers to pay for the new generation built on their behalf – whether they show up and use the power or not - rather than buying up existing power. The concept is called BYOG, or "bring your own generation."

  • londons_explore22 days ago
    So loads of new demand is pushhing the price sky high....

    And the fix is to... Cap the price?

    Did nobody do economics 101?

    • lucas_membrane22 days ago
      In the USA, the history of assuming that the national government will support power to the people the way FDR, PWA, BPA, TVA, ... did has given the national government quite a bit of leverage to keep the states in line. I'm figuring that this auction will be used by the executive branch to buy power at a high price in the auction, then allocate it to areas in need according to a plan approved by the powers that be. If they do a good job, nothing to see here. YMMV.
    • bigbadfeline22 days ago
      > Did nobody do economics 101?

      They did but didn't like it. Simulating activity buys them time, after the blackouts, it will be like "See Econ 101, capping the price doesn't work, let's uncap it quick."

      Round and round we go.

  • rapjr922 days ago
    Is the root of the problem buying more power or building more grid?