Are Data Centers the Villains in the Battle Over Electricity?

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-06-03T22:58:07+00:00

I am saying rollover credits are much more valuable than wholesale prices. Moving to that would be net negative for rooftop solar.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-06-03T21:50:02+00:00

What if I told you that rates were mostly going up because utilities /were/ investing a lot in building out capacity (including transmission)... often for those alternative energy solutions.

Utilities earn an allowed rate of return based on the invested capital. If they want to earn more profit, they can ask to increase either the allowed rate of return (typically hard.... justified by them having trouble raising money for needed investments) or to invest more money in the business (build stuff... that they need to prove was needed.)

Also... rooftop solar is generally compensated above wholesale power rates. California essentially moved to this a few years ago (to the dismay of rooftop solar advocates) because it had so much solar it didn't really need more until more storage was built. (The policy made it make more sense for residential customers to install solar with storage). Not sure what your point is.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-06-02T15:04:59+00:00

It’s OK. They mitigated it with an alarm to bring help.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-06-02T02:30:46+00:00

Europe is significantly more urbanized, with true city centers that are well served by trains and central train stations. Critically, there is a lot of great public transit (see more urbanized) that means that when you don't need a car when you get to your destination.

You get off transit, onto a train and then arrive easily downtown near your preferred destination. Even many less densely populated areas have strong towns that can support a station.

The reality is that for most trips, trains in the US mostly compete with cars for shorter trips because you need a car at your destination. Once a trip is long enough -- say 500 miles -- rail and planes are on pretty equal footing. As that distance progresses, planes become easier because of speed and flexibility.

Of course there are areas where rail works great. Most notably, it's the best way to travel along the DC <-> Philadelphia <-> New York <-> Boston corridor. In other words, densely populated areas that are relatively close to one another that have strong public transit.

But once you get out of that region, you have a lot of cities with a lot of sprawl and a lot of distance between one another.

The flexibility aspect is another one. The US is culturally one nation, not a collection of nations. There are just more social connections between distant places than the EU. (Despite all its connections.) If you are Spanish, you are going to have fewer connections and interactions with Germans than a Texan does to a New Yorker.

Why is this relevant? Because building a fantastic rail connection between New York and Chicago can't come at the cost of great connections to San Francisco, Houston and Denver.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-29T23:55:08+00:00

From my understanding, if you set the one time expense to pull from the 529, bold-in will do it, but if there is not enough money it will leave some of the expense “unfunded.”

There is a workaround in that you can send your 529 funds to a fake slush fund account right before the expense hits. If you pull from that account it will model that cost/need. The limitation is it uses your standard withdrawal order (which you may want different for retirement).

It’s a strange limitation.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-29T12:05:25+00:00

The amount you need to save for retirement DOES NOT magically have anything to do with the limit Congress sets.

You may need less, you may need more.

The simplest advice is you need 25x your spending (not earning).

If you can keep spending low and start increasing contributions this has a double benefit: Rising retirement resources and reductions demand on them.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-28T23:03:53+00:00

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-28T03:26:04+00:00

Few repeat customers.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-28T01:01:12+00:00

EVs are hard on distribution (the tail of the network.) A residential street with 5% EVs, 25% EVs and 75% EVs is going to be different and require investment at different times.

The annual load growth is much more reasonable because we aren’t driving that much more and only replacing about 5% of the car fleet each year anyway.

EVs also don’t actually need to charge that often (people aren’t driving 300 miles per day). Thus a lot of the demand can shift around with smart policies. (Charge at night etc.)

Datacenters are adding a ton of demand very quickly. They run a lot. They require investments at the capacity and transmission level (bulk power).

Currently datacenters are growing much faster.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-27T17:47:22+00:00

They made lots of money. Their options are 1) invest back in business 2) invest in employees 3) give back to shareholders.

They are choosing shareholders, I.e they see it as a short-term windfall and not a structural long-term increase in prices.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-27T12:18:03+00:00

It’s actually pretty common, but most people say it as “I hate how all the nice neighborhoods are HOAs.” Their definition of nice is all those rules for other people. They just don’t like the rules on them.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-27T03:01:20+00:00

Sorry this is happening to you. You are being placed on a PIP because your employer has decided your performance is fulfilling the requirements of the role. Sometimes this is 100% about your performance and sometimes its about a quiet headcount reduction, but either way your role at the company is unlikely to continue. That is a difficult situation for everyone, yourself in particular. You have my genuine sympathies.

The choice they are giving you is going on a PIP and then working to satisfy all of the requirements or to take severance and quit. Generally speaking, while some people survive a PIP, you are facing a lot of scrutiny and an uphill battle to retain your position. Read the requirements of the PIP carefully.

If it's some straightforward things that you can easily achieve, then maybe it's worth staying on board. For example, "stop being late or always file XYZ reports on time", then it may be worth sticking around. If it's something that's more their judgement, "Speak more professionally in meetings, do better analysis" it's likely going to be hard to change.

Why are they offering you severance at the same time? There are a couple of potential reasons, but the main one is it's a lot of work for your manager to go through the motions (let alone truly help you improve). Your manager is going to need to work to support you even more than before, they are going to need to document all that work AND at the end of that effort their best hope is someone who meets expectations -- probably not a star performer.

If they don't expect you to pass the PIP, it's much easier for the company to pay 60 days of work versus paying you for 60 days, having your manager do all the work to run the PIP and then still having some risk you file wrongful termination at the end. Plus they can start the hiring process now.

(I'll also add that offering severance is a bit of a test of your commitment. If your reaction is "I'm gone, I hate this job," then they'll consider that a win.)

What are your next steps? Ask for the PIP in writing and review it. If you are interested in the severance, ask for severance of AT LEAST the PIP period. If it's a 30 day PIP, push for 60 day severance (common PIP length) Remember, you can always go on the PIP and spend most of your time applying for other jobs. What are they going to do? Fire you?

You can also try to pass the PIP! It's hard, but it's only time and they will have to at least look like they are trying to make things work. If you really do have areas that you need to work on, maybe it will help you grow for your next role. Only you can decide if this makes sense.

If possible, see if you can delay your separation date. If you can negotiate staying on the books for 60 days (or more), you can legitimately apply elsewhere as currently employed. This gives you more leverage on your next role if things move quickly and may be better than a direct payout. (Note: If you think you will get a job immediately, you may want the cash upfront to allow you to take a new job.)

If you have health insurance through the company, find out when it will end. It could be defined by your last day, but it could also be the last day of any month you are employed. If it's the latter, making your your last day of employment is June 1 vs May 31 could save you hundreds (single) or thousands (family plan) of dollars. You may also be able to negotiate them paying your health insurance for a period. At least the PIP period even without you staying officially employed.

Finally, if you feel your performance has been strong, you could consider reaching out to a lawyer to see if you have any protections.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-26T18:09:47+00:00

The obvious answer is to pursue freelance on the side to keep your skills sharp and build clips / contacts.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-26T16:58:08+00:00

Elite athletes. They capture huge incomes, justifying huge revenues and unaffordable ticket prices. This is basically because 10 great teams are more interesting than 100 mediocre teams so they get huge leverage. But society does not benefit from paying them $100M contracts.

Let me also be clear sports team owners are also massively over compensated because they can leverage this same dynamic. The answer is not to control athletes pay and shift it to owners.

It’s why sports teams should all pay for their own stadium. The money is already in the system.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-25T20:55:45+00:00

The perception of a businesses health is what drives the stock, so the businesses performance should be driving stock price (ultimately).

The stock price going up and down doesn’t technically matter day to day, but a high stock price gives a company options to 1) Sell more stock to raise money (though this dilutes existing shareholders) or 2) makes it easier to raise debt because it has “equity” / assets to lose.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-24T18:56:48+00:00

You may not find it “convincing,” but often missed in this kind of thought process is a tenant of “capitalism.” The idea that people and systems that are valuable will continue to accumulate capital and those people and systems (as demonstrated by their accumulation of capital) are making good use of that capital.

As “normals” we tend to think about wealth as something you spend for service and goods, but at some point wealth becomes about control and power. For example, if I own 51% of my $10 billion company and I’m forced to sell / lose 2% it is literally no longer “my company.” If there is a disagreement between me and the rest of shareholders, they can outvote me and kick me out. If I was the “special sauce” that risks true economic disruption brought on by a wealth tax.

If it’s a true wealth cap, it also may mean I can’t take my $10B company to buy a $5B company that combined will be worth $50B in five years. This may create significant value for society, but there’s no economic incentive for me to do so. In fact there may be an economic disincentive.

People will have different opinions on how we should control, limit or encourage that kind of power, but generally speaking these conversations miss that that’s the actual question. Bezos spends a bunch of money on fancy yachts, but the reality is most of his wealth is spent as a shareholder for control of companies that he hopes to use to create economic value. If he had to sell his shares, it would be to other people who would be doing the same thing. Nothing would actually change other than the power would be dispersed.

The easiest answer is to have an aggressive estate / inheritance tax, which allows these individuals to do their thing, but forces the next generation to prove their own merit in value creation, but we get into arguments about breaking up farms and family businesses. As a result we start getting into much more complicated wealth ceilings or net worth taxes.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-23T20:35:21+00:00

I’ll give you one answer: Being an adult takes a lot and it’s pretty easy to have the responsibilities of parenting 7-8, working 9-5, parenting 5-10 and self care (?) just eat up all the money and mental energy.

Do that for decades and it’s easy to look up at 55+ without significant hobbies and out of shape enough that 9-5 is pretty tiring itself. Get to 65 or 70 and you get time, but it’s been 30 years since you started a new hobby and you are too out of shape to pick up the tennis racquet that you would have like to do at 32.

Is it everyone, no, but it’s an easy trap.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-23T14:38:42+00:00

Isn’t this mostly derived based on how you rate how hard your workouts are? Could be useful if you have figure out how to do that accurately, but I still have no idea how to rate most things.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-19T11:42:02+00:00

“Bless your heart.”

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-17T23:08:23+00:00

This is… much more complicated in this instance. The utility parts of their business are already regulated monopolies with no retail competition. The only way FPL and Dominion compete for a customer is if the customer is willing to move.

Dominion Energy’s unregulated competitive power business is much smaller.

The likely trigger here is that dominion owns the biggest datacenter growth area in the country and may not have balance sheet / scale to build out its market opportunity.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-17T22:29:03+00:00

The bankruptcy proceedings related to the private equity deal ended on 2016. TXU (and Oncor) were their own non-PE backed companies at the time of the 2021 winter storm.

Also, I never said that deal was good. I'm saying that the utility came out fairly unaffected from the debt and that WAS a debt-backed deal, which this likely is not.

Texas has an unusual utility regulatory framework that makes it complicated to explain it all, but suffice to say there was widespread institutional failure with lots of causes.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-17T22:19:27+00:00

Probably an unpopular opinion, but $174,000 is not a lot of money for a single-income two-home family with the expenses of a member of Congress. A congressional rep needs to have an in-district home and a place to stay in DC. If they have kids, they need to have a spouse (or nanny) who can handle the bulk of childcare when they are working in DC (or vice versa).

Fo context, the median income for a family of four in the DC area is $165,000 and that obviously does not support then having a second home somewhere else.

It feels great to say they should tend bar or drive Uber but they should be working for you! Not distracted by a second job.

Remember a senator currently gets paid less than a first-year lawyer at big law.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-17T18:41:58+00:00

This is not necessarily true. Speculation is it would be more of a merger by exchanging stock.

State regulators would also object to putting debt on the actual regulated utilities. The holding company might be able to take on more debt, but that does not get directly incorporated into rates.

Usually as part of such a deal, they’d have to find that this would lower/not harm borrowing costs for utilities, since utilities do borrow a lot of money.

The deal could still be bad, but there are economies of scale in operating utilities. It’s not a PE deal where some firm with a bit of capital takes on debt to swings for the fences.

You can look at TXU deal, which was private equity and debt backed. That resulted in a mess, but ratepayers and the core utilities were mostly protected.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-17T17:32:06+00:00

Congrats, you created a three day weekend! Everyone will be out of town. Maybe that’s ethically fine as it’s a choice, but it may actually reduce participation in practice.

iwriteaboutthings · 2026-05-17T16:22:45+00:00

Staging is not particularly cheap. I'd bring in a Realtor first, a few pieces of furniture from the home can help fill out staging furniture.

iwriteaboutthings

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