“Unless people lean on the public utilities commissions, the ratepayers will take it on the chin,” said Mark Cooper, an economic analyst at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Even as some corporate customers have been underwhelmed by A.I.’s usefulness so far, tech companies plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars on it…. At the same time, the boom threatens to drive up power bills for residents and small businesses. Nationally, the average electricity rate for residents has risen more than 30 percent since 2020, after years of relatively modest increases. Much of that increase has been driven by utilities’ catching up on deferred maintenance and hardening grids for extreme weather.
In the coming years, A.I. could turbocharge those increases.
Connect the Dots 101 
Leave a comment