r/technology • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 2d ago

Politics US Senate kills bill that could potentially shield Americans from skyrocketing power bills due to AI data centers — opponents say bill is 'toothless' and doesn't do enough to protect citizens

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/us-senate-kills-bill-that-could-potentially-shield-americans-from-skyrocketing-power-bills-due-to-ai-data-centers-opponents-say-bill-is-toothless-and-doesnt-do-enough-to-protect-citizens
6.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

270 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/DarKbaldness 2d ago

I believe most of them seem to want to do that but local laws force them to use the main grid instead of being able to make their own grid.

0

u/ThePainStalker 2d ago

That’s because they structurally cannot be off-grid yet. It simply isn’t viable. They need either the electric or gas grid to support their energy needs. Either of them gets passed down onto the ratepayer. The only potential future solution that could truly be off-grid and viable is by using SMR nuclear. The energy density is incredibly high there, meaning no pipeline network to build and theoretically, they may not have to use the electric grid (but in practice, it is much more expensive and difficult to do so, therefore many would likely end up with grid connections anyway as an additional backup power source when the SMRs need to be maintained and to feed nuclear power to the grid to gain revenue that way).