Solar power is currently the cheapest power anyone can add to the grid in most places.
Cheap power is one thing. Quality reliable power at mass scale is quite another. These things chew through a LOT of power and most people don't understand the sheer scale of it. I've seen a local one (a medium AI data centre) take up 2% of the whole cities grid and there's plenty more to come around here including a 1GW one (10% of the whole city's power in only 0.005% approx of the city's whole space) which cleared wildlife reserved land to build. Even a few of these things compete massively for trades people, commodities, power and other infrastructure pricing locals out. They are talking about using evaporative cooling as well putting pressure on water supply.
Electricity transports really well.
Data centres don't need reliable power. Of course, all else being equal, they would like their power to be reliable, but if your choices are between delaying your data centres by a few months (or not building it at all) or running a risk of having a few hours or even days here or there without power, the first choice wins: pretty much the only downside is the few hours of usage you lose when there's no power. It's not like powering down causes damage, like when your aluminum smelter cools down too much.
> Even a few of these things compete massively for trades people, commodities, power and other infrastructure pricing locals out.
Power is pretty much an industrial produced service, a bit like shoes or cars. In the medium to long run, that stuff has pretty much a horizontal supply curve.
In any case, price electricity right, and let people decide how much they want to use. (Give poor people money, if necessary.)
> They are talking about using evaporative cooling as well putting pressure on water supply.
Yet another reason to put a proper market price on water. Agriculture and industry usually goes through even more water.
Feel free to give residents money to buy water at market prices. But residential use of water is so low in comparison that even if the price goes 10x, it doesn't make a dent in people's budgets. Especially not the minuscule amounts you need for drinking and cooking, and even personal hygiene like flushing your toilet doesn't use all that much.
Data centres also prefer being near major cities due to latency. This means to deliver the amount of power required there needs to be huge upgrades to infrastructure (long distance power lines) just to provide for data centres. Who does that? At the moment for many cities it is the taxpayer who will fork higher electricity bills for infra upgrades for a data centre few of them care or need.
On the water issue - who will give money to residents? The taxpayer? Just to subsidize data centres/AI construction? Water is also unlike electricity more scarce especially potable water. Do we build more dams? Desalination? Main line piping? Taxpayer funds that again?
To the average joe blow: I'm paying more taxes, for data centres I don't want, to pay more for electricity and have water shortages, for something that will take my job or someone's job I know. Not a great trade.
There's a lot of negative externalities to data centres due to their sheer scale to the point where they compete with households and other industries. My view is that the data centres should pay and compensate the community for those should they use grid or community based infra. The income could actually long term could help the community get a dividend from data centre construction as well.