I don’t know how wide spread smart meters are in the US, but it should be fairly simple so have an extra tariff on these kind of consumers, or perhaps just tariffs during peak periods.

At least it could be enforced that the surplus heat from data centers had to be reused in some way, could be residental heating or ptx.

I don’t think it’s all bad in the long run. A higher base load also give higher incentives to install renewable energy. In Denmark we have issues with the cannibalisation effect, i.e. We have reach a point where it’s no longer financially viable to install more renewable assets. We often see negative power prices on windy and sunny days, which forces the renewable asset owners to either turn off their assets during these periods, or pay the negative spot price.

In certain periods they might have cheaper prices than regular consumers and in other periods it might be more expensive. They just have a fixed price agreement. No producer of electricity hands out free power.

How would that work? With a flat fee or depending on whether ai companies are tipping the scale to a more expensive marginal price within a price period?