HACKER Q&A
📣 ThinkBeat

Cloud hosting rates with surging energy cost


In Europe energy prices have skyrocketed. I will leave out why for an entirely different post.

We already see the cost of everything rising way past anything we have seen before (at least in my life) and far more people will need to make cuts in them Private habits and expenses.

With energy prices surging the cost of operating data centers will become (I think) a lot more expensive. and massive "cloud" data centers even more so.

How fast and how will it impact the prices for

1) Individual cost.

Things that, I think, may change: Spotify, Netflix (or any other tv stream), Dropbox, Office365 (yupp), lucidchart pay for a couple of WordPress installs, email (yupp pay) and several other things.

Since I am already watching my grocery budget, a significant increase in prices for the "internet" things will mean making some difficult (or not) choices on what to cut.

2) Companies. When you are locked into AWS, Azure, Google Cloud how will the prices change how budgets are allocated and what can you drop (if anything).

In addition, companies have email hosting, and a host of other "cloud" related expenses.

I imagine things will have to be prioritized. Vendors offering lower prices can see a major migration perhaps.

3) Cloud providers. How will AWS, Azure and the rest handle more than double or triple the electricity/ energy related expenses?

An example: GYM

A company that operates a chain of gyms, are now trying to keep their doors open even with a 5 to 6 times increase in their power bills

(For the gym it is made worse that many members come in just to take a good shower since they can afford to do it at home)

They say they are going to be lowering the temperature in the gym to about 10C (50F) Decrease how hot showers can get and a cut in flow Fewer lights and no music.

Will people still go?

An example: A FARMER

A farmer recently threw away his entire harvest of leeks ( I think) tons of food (sickening) because his business is largely dependent on storing produce in giant freezers / fridges and with the rise in cost he will be Paying far more to chill the produce than he could possibly sell it for.

The world is in great need of food. But storing and moving has gotten far more expensive.


  👤 rav1an Accepted Answer ✓
While there is an impact to the cost of operating data centers, it is different than the household one. Majority of the data centers, especially the bigger ones have a team responsible for securing the long-term energy prices via different agreements. The 'giants' like Facebook/Google/Microsoft are purchasing power directly from the grid operators and also have their ways of securing/offsetting the price, see here for more info: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

👤 SQL2219
Post from 8 months ago

Germany Electricity Prices Hit Record €431 per MWh

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29624346


👤 dave4420
I wonder what the chances are that data centres will have their electricity cut off at some point this winter?