Brendan Pierpont

So you're supposed to picture some server farm in Virginia with a bib on eating your electricity with a knife and fork.

But keep reading, and near the bottom, she's got an analyst named Brendan Pierpont explaining that the East Coast grid already started revising its data center forecast down after it had already set your prices off the bigger guesses.

And his line is, we've locked in high prices based on an already outdated load forecast.

They guessed how hungry the guy was going to be, priced the whole menu for the man three times his size, and handed the check to you.

Utilities have guessed wrong on demand before.

I talked to Brendan Pierpont at Energy Innovation, where he directs electricity monitoring.

In the mid-90s or so, utilities were still projecting this rapid demand growth that they'd experienced for the last few years, few decades even at that point.

In some parts of the country, They got way out over their skis.

They'll take that generation, put it onto the grid.

And the thing about the turn to gas is that people who watch the grid see it as a step backward.

Here's Brendan Pierpont.

One of the responses of the data center industry to the slow pace of being able to connect to the grid and get power has been this huge turn toward on-site natural gas.