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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

Access to very cheap power in the MISO region is likely one of the top driving factors for this location. It extends partially into Texas and I've found that my rates are sometimes as little as half of what ERCOT customers are paying.

The #1 thing that makes MISO so cheap is the fact that it has the heaviest coal generation mix (>40%) out of all US regional grid operators. Any talk about natural gas or renewables pales in comparison.

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I would guess the 20 year 'tax break' (AKA the other taxpayers are footing the bill) is the real reason for the building. shell game

Meta built a data center in North Kansas City. I'm not sure details of their break (Mayor loves to hand out money), but power is likely cheaper, & def much greener (1/3 from wind farms in Western Kansas state last I checked).

"take advantage of a new Louisiana incentive program, established by Act 730, that offers qualifying projects a state and local sales and use tax rebate on the purchase or lease of data center equipment"

https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/news/meta-selects-north...

> AKA the other taxpayers are footing the bill

Curious as to how you reached this conclusion. No taxpayer funds are going towards construction or operation of the data center. The lack of tax revenue from Meta is nothing spent, and they're still going to be paying into the local economy. The energy infrastructure is going to be built by Entergy, who've projected it to cost customers ~$1 more or less per month.

As someone who lives here, this is one of the few times I agree with our government. We're one of the least competitive states in the country, our tech sector is almost non-existent. It's reasonable to offer what you can to attract business. I think Landry's LED efforts so far have been a respectable attempt at improving the state of things.

Why would coal generation make it so cheap? I would expect any coal-heavy generation region to be far more expensive than a hydro-heavy region.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...

Because all of the plants are fully amortized. If they were brand new, the total cost would be excessive. Customers are mostly just paying for operations, fuel and maintenance. There is no capital recovery needed.

That's true of hydro heavy regions too, if not even more so. The Hoover Dam is not new. The Bonneville Dam is not new. Niagara Falls is not new.

Not that it changes your point that much, but doesn’t MISO have more like a 20-30% Coal mix?[0]

It looks like natural gas is usually the biggest source of electricity.

[0] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-MIDW-MISO/72h/hourly...

If you look at the all years view on electricity maps (https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-MIDW-MISO/all/yearly), 25% is share of generation from coal in MISO.

I'd be curious to test the GP's point. Since electricity maps doesn't have cost data for most US balancing authorities, you maybe could try figuring out power costs per balancing authority to end customers by using something like the https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/ "Sales to Customers Customer Sited" data. Revenue over Megawatthours for Industrial service.

You can look on the real time map:

https://miso.singularity.energy/realtime

I am seeing 39.1% right now

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