Tennessee Utility Consumers Alliance (TUCA)<\/a> is the watchdog group aiming to protect ratepayers against rising utility rates. They are concerned that AI is putting a strain on our power grid.<\/p>\n“Data centers use a lot of power from nearby resources,” said Issac Freeman. <\/p>\n
Issac Freeman, the Memphis native behind the grassroots organization, says low-income families have the most to lose.<\/p>\n
“Those that make $50,000 or less, they have to think about whether they’re going to pay for food, or they’re going to pay for their utility bill,” Freeman said.<\/p>\n
Roughly 170,000 low-income Tennessee households whose incomes are below 50% of the Federal Poverty Level pay almost a third of their annual income on home energy bills, according to Think Tennessee. That’s significantly higher than the 6% of household income that is considered affordable. The Tennessee counties with a home energy burden of at least 34% are Bledsoe, Pickett, Grundy, Stewart, Johnson, Wayne, and Moore County.<\/p>\n
While particularly burdensome for struggling families, this isn’t just a low-income issue. Everyone is affected when rates go up.<\/p>\n
TUCA is asking for more transparency from federal utilities like the Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies power to most of Tennessee through local providers like NES.<\/p>\n
“Utility companies like TVA and local distributors [should] find new innovative ways to build better power grids for us to benefit from without having to bear the cost,” Freeman said. <\/p>\n
A sharp uptick in power demand recently is in part driven by facilities like Elon Musk’s xAI facility in Memphis.<\/p>\n
“They’re using a lot of resources in that area for a supercomputer. In order to power the supercomputer to keep cool, the water is being pulled from the aquifer in that city,” Freeman said. <\/p>\n
AI industry leaders say rising electricity costs aren\u2019t just because of AI. They blame old and inefficient power grids, too.<\/p>\n
Still, Freeman, who’s part of a generation typically enthusiastic about AI, compares using it to running water, something you shouldn’t leave on without thinking.<\/p>\n
“If we’re all leaving that water on for an extended period of time, there’s a cost to that. And so you really want to be mindful of the cost, even if it is a necessity,” Freeman said. <\/p>\n
Is your household or small business struggling to keep up with higher utility bills? Let me know in an email at <\/b>hannah.mcdonald@newschannel5.com<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) \u2014 Artificial intelligence is reinventing how we work, surf the internet, and problem-solve. But a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,739,158,740,741,67,132,68,742,743,744],"class_list":{"0":"post-471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-elon-musk-ai","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-tennessee-utility-consumers-alliance","13":"tag-tuca","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-utility-rates","18":"tag-utility-rates-and-ai","19":"tag-xai"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114718118289130390","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}