I work on “the grid”. There is no one reason, but I can list the main culprits I see.
Decaying infrastructure
Negligible investment in transport infrastructure (people tend to focus on production, as does this meme, when it isn’t the biggest issue)
Negligible investment in data management.
Datacenter supply infrastructure creation is being wholly subsidized by end users. When the energy company goes to the legislature and says “we need 17 billion dollars or we won’t be able to supply the city with power”, they neglect to say that the entirety of that new capacity and all of the previous excess capacity the system had, is now going to power up new datacenters. The legislature approves and the cost is rolled into the consumer’s bill, if not entirely then definitely in part.
Significant fuckery in billing and estimation. This I cannot go into detail on but I can remind all of you that you have the right to request proof of your detailed power usage.
My power company recently contacted me with an “exciting offer” where instead of billing me based on my energy usage they’d just bill me based on what my average usage was previously. I politely declined. I think I’ll keep paying based on something measurable instead of vibe based billing.
I work on “the grid”. There is no one reason, but I can list the main culprits I see.
My power company recently contacted me with an “exciting offer” where instead of billing me based on my energy usage they’d just bill me based on what my average usage was previously. I politely declined. I think I’ll keep paying based on something measurable instead of vibe based billing.