§13 — 27 August 2026

On the server barns

Democrat

What the left is building is the invoice going the other direction. A bill introduced this month would put a one-cent-per-kilowatt-hour excise on data-center power — the first attempt to price the buildout to the companies instead of the neighbors ¹. The grid operator itself filed to curtail giant loads that don't bring their own generation ².

The counting holds the line meanwhile: the market monitor's tallies put a public number on who caused the increase ³, and the Memphis suit keeps the turbines in a courtroom where "security" has to argue with a permit file ⁴. Four companies plan $725 billion of this next year; the invoice is not unreasonable ⁵.

Sources

Republican

The word for why a server barn outranks your electric bill is security. When the NAACP sued over twenty-seven methane turbines running without permits outside Memphis, the government's lawyers did not dispute the missing permits — they moved to dismiss on national-security grounds ¹. A July order opens federal land to any data center over 100 megawatts and trims its environmental review ².

The bill for the buildout lands downstream. The mid-Atlantic grid's own market monitor counted $6.3 billion of this summer's record capacity auction as data-center demand, recovered from customers ³. And when the TVA changed its rates last week, it published no arithmetic showing households are protected ⁴.

Sources

“Your lights flicker so a chatbot can finish a limerick. The utility calls it load growth. I call it the neighbor who taps your keg and hands you a bill for the cups.”

Sal

“Nobody's bill went up. Your bill experienced growth. You said you wanted growth.”

Chip

On the server barns

INVOICE

Sources

SECURITY

Sources