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Several things are coming together that will drive electrical power prices through the roof over the next few years. The first are mega data centers. There are several companies - most notably Microsoft and Palantir - that are putting up massive data centers that will take up to 1 gigawatt per center. That's the output of a large nuclear reactor. Palantir especially will be growing fast, since the US government uses them to do most of their AI, and Trump has recently signed an executive order to share data between government agencies on US citizens. This will require a LOT of processing to do the sort of collation and profiling that the administration wants to do. Palantir got half a billion from the US government in the last quarter alone, and is on track to get over five billion in the next three years. Much of that will go into new mega data centers. As these data centers open, utilities will be very happy to sell them power. They are exactly the load they want to supply - a load that never changes significantly, and that they can charge 24/7 for. Compare that to domestic users, who have a habit of not using much power at night or in the middle of the day, then using things like air conditioning or heating unpredictably. This is much harder to plan for - and utilities will charge accordingly. The second is cancellation of renewables projects. The Trump administration has cancelled approximately 100GW worth of solar and wind projects that were planned for the next five years. This equates to about 30GW of equivalent baseload generation due to intermittent availability of wind and solar. To "compensate" they are ordering about 5GW of coal power plants to not shut down. Thus there will be a significant increase in demand, and a significant decrease in new generation. The laws of supply and demand will thus send power prices much higher. In addition, those coal plants cost a lot more to operate than renewables. One 1.4GW plant, the J.H. Campbell Plant, was ordered to remain open for at least another six months, resulting in an additional $100 million in costs to Michigan ratepayers. Some unsubsidized costs per megawatt-hour: Coal $69-168 Wind $27-73 Solar $29-92 Solar plus storage $60-210 https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024-_vf.pdf https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/fossil-fuels/trump-extend-campbell-michigan-coal-plant So higher generation prices = higher power prices. In the olden timey days, PUC's (public utility commissions) would limit how much power companies can charge residential customers. But these have become so corrupt and beholden to the utilities, and have become so easy to game for larger companies (think Enron) that they have no effective power any more. So get ready to pay a lot more for power as AI starts competing with you for that power. I would recommend solar as an alternative, but with the Trump tariffs it's not very cost effective at the moment if you don't already have it.

Thanks G! You have forgotten more about this case then most will ever learn. I feel like people point to this when dismissing the grudge as just part of the conversation and mistakenly attribute Tina to bringing the word up when it was in fact Cooper. Whoever this guy was he had an ax to grind. Maybe nothing specific as his comment suggests but just in general. The system? Society? The current state of affairs in America? Did he want money sure but I think he was striving for something more. There are less bold ways to acquire 200k criminally. He is on the low end dollar wise as far as parajacking ransom requests go. Cooper imo was a peculiar and complex individual. A man with strong opinions and convictions. Like lxchilton said it’s too general to narrow down the suspect pool but I think it should be baked into the psychological profile of Cooper.