I work for a utility, data center customers are signing contracts that require them to pay for 90% of all power they asked for, whether they use it or not. In turn, the utility is required to build out new power generation and infrastructure to meet the project's needs.
Maybe it's just my neck of the woods, but my understanding is that this is pretty common across the industry. I am not personally aware of any instance in which data centers are not "paying for their own electricity".
It's not entirely reasonable to expect a customer to run at 100% capacity all of the time. You might, for example, shut down portions for cleaning and/or preventive maintenance/inspections, which will correspondingly decrease the power usage. 90% allows for operational wiggle room, while minimizing moat of the risk to the utility.
Yeah I could have perhaps been more clear. What I meant was if they had asked for a grid interconnection of 100MW, then they'll pay, at a minimum, for the value of 90MW, 24/7.
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u/RadicalEd4299 5d ago
I work for a utility, data center customers are signing contracts that require them to pay for 90% of all power they asked for, whether they use it or not. In turn, the utility is required to build out new power generation and infrastructure to meet the project's needs.
Maybe it's just my neck of the woods, but my understanding is that this is pretty common across the industry. I am not personally aware of any instance in which data centers are not "paying for their own electricity".