North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Second day of rolling blackouts starts

  • From: Shawn McMahon
  • Date: Thu Jan 18 19:54:40 2001 
On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 03:48:58PM -0800, Mathew Butler wrote:
> Los Angeles rates have stayed the same, and they're not having any problems.
> (It's a public utility, and thus wasn't forced into competition at the same
> rate as the private companies.)

This all proves that if you're looking for a place to put a data center, you
need to keep this in mind:

X amount of power takes Y amount of money to produce.

You can either pay it to a state-sponsored monopoly, or you can pay it to a
private company competing freely, or you can force artificially low prices
through pseudo-private companies operating under cap that generates Y minus
N amount of income, and watch X minus N amount of power be generated.

No amount of legislation will make Y minus N amount of money produce X amount
of power.  No company that is truly competing will charge Y minus N, because
they make more money if they charge Y.

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