Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is a simple recurring donation that gets you perks to NPR's podcasts. Join at plus.npr.org. Thanks again for your support. Here's the show. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, short wavers. Emily Kwong here with NPR alum, now independent science writer, one of our favorite reporters on the planet, Dan Charles.
Oh, you make me all choked up. Hi, Emily.
Hey, Dan. OK, you've brought us basically a mystery novel, something about money and power.
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.
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Chapter 2: How are data centers impacting electricity costs for consumers?
Right now, there's a company that wants to build a big solar farm called Cassius Blue in southern Virginia.
Chapter 3: What findings did the analysis from Carnegie Mellon and North Carolina State reveal?
That's named for a really pretty butterfly species, by the way.
Nice.
Okay. So in order for Cassius Blue, the solar farm, to connect to the electrical grid, Huh. Okay. So it sounds like if you are a solar or wind farm generating electricity, you have to pay for the power lines.
But if you are consuming electricity, like you're a customer, a big data center, you have to pay for the power lines. You don't have to pay for that upgrade. Instead, everybody gets a rate increase tacked onto their bill to build those power lines.
That is the way the system works right now. Those are the rules. And Mike says the rules should change, that data centers should have to pay up front for the power lines they need, just like solar farms.
What are the chances, Dan, that this will actually happen?
Yeah, it actually is possible, I think. Data centers are not popular these days. They're running into more and more opposition. And just a few weeks ago, the Trump administration actually called for a new federal rule that would require new data centers to pay the costs involved in connecting them to the grid. Oh, wow. That's a big shift.
Yeah, it was kind of a shock because the Trump administration has been very enthusiastic about AI. Mike Jacobs says it's not really clear if there will be any such rule because this has always been something that state regulators had control over, not the federal government.
But they're asking for the right thing. So we got a nice little fight unfolding over this very problem.
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