Dan Charles

Oh, you make me all choked up.

Hi, Emily.

Electric power.

I took a field trip the other day, Emily, and I made you a little audio postcard.

So here I am in Data Center Alley, Northern Virginia, Loudoun County, and I'm standing along the road and there is not a person in sight, but I'm seeing these enormous buildings.

And along the road there are these enormous power lines, steel towers with wires hanging from them.

There is so much electricity flowing into this place, like rivers and rivers of electricity.

Well, the specific thing I've been looking into is what is this doing to my electric bill?

Some of those forecasts are a little speculative.

They're based on models of future electricity markets.

But I found a guy who showed me how this is actually playing out right now.

When he says transmission, he means electricity transmission.

Power lines, substations full of massive pieces of equipment called transformers.

This whole incredible network we call the electrical grid.

He's a grid geek, so he sees things that go right by most people.

Like when he takes a flight.

Yeah, this is his world.

So a year or so ago, Mike was looking at plans for new power lines, and he saw a bunch of them were being built to supply data centers.

And he realized the data centers were getting these connections pretty much for free.

What do you mean for free?