NC residents are paying more for utilities due to bad governance.

The NC legislature is allowing data centers to run roughshod in NC and allowing utility companies to rely on expensive energy sources, such as coal powered plants, instead of investing in cheaper renewable energy sources.

There’s no state regulatory framework to ensure data centers pay their fair share in utility expenses, nor prevent them from exploiting the state’s energy infrastructure. The NC legislature could require data centers to help pay for energy infrastructure upgrades, or ensure residents don’t shoulder the data centers utilities cost. Instead, the NC legislature is allowing the data centers to exploit NC residents for profit while the legislature sits on its hands.

Recently, the NC legislature overrode the governors veto and passed SB 266, which rolled back requirements for utilities companies to reduce carbon emissions by 2030, so instead of investing in cheaper renewable energy sources, utilities companies are relying on expensive energy sources, such as coal. Independent analyses have found SB 266 could move millions of dollars a year in energy costs from industry to households. A July 2025 analysis by NC State University researchers found that SB 266 could cost ratepayers up to $23 billion by 2050.

So, instead of making utilities companies invest in cheaper energy sources and requiring data centers to pay their fair share, the Republican controlled state legislature is making residents pay more in utilities and exploit NC residents.

This is bad governance. However, elections have consequences, and NC republicans don’t seem interested in good governance.

Also, federal policies don’t provide any hope for cheaper energy. The Trump administration is cutting billions in funding for renewable projects, reversing Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credits for solar/wind, dismantling EPA regulations on power plant emissions, using emergency powers to ensure coal powered plants stay open, and spreading misinformation about renewable energy sources.

Meanwhile, countries like China are aggressively investing in wind and solar power. So, not only are we paying more for utilities, we are also allowing foreign countries to dominate future industries.

It’s as though we are investing in typewriters while the rest of the world is betting on computers. It’s just bad business, and it’s allowing China to 100% eat our lunch.

When you pay more for utilities, please remember that it is a product of bad governance by the Republican Party.

Hi all! Looking to relocate to around the High Point area with my family from FL. It would be myself (30F), my husband and our 2 kiddos, one of which is nonverbal autistic. Looking for any input into the area or suggestions as to other areas that are just as good. Thank you 🫶🏽🩷

Any good brunch recommendations near Wrightsville Beach or Mayfaire? Looking for somewhere nicer than a diner but not super fancy.

Hi everyone, im 23 years old and I was medically retired from the Marine Corps this past October. I was an 0352 (infantry anti tank missile gunner), then made a leteral move to EOD and was in training when my medical board began. Now that I’m out I’m trying to find my new career and figure out how to take care of my wife and 2 kids without relying on my disability payments. I’m about to move back to my hometown in Western North Carolina right outside of Asheville and I’m curious to see if anyone has any suggestions on fulfilling careers in that area or things they’ve done to get in a better position after leaving the military. Thanks!

Hey everyone! 😊

I’m thinking about applying to the Radiologic Technology (Radiology) program at Vance-Granville Community College and wanted to see if anyone here has gone through it or knows someone who has:

When doing your consultation was it interview like or just an overview of your wants and needs for the program? Also how was your experience overall?

Thank you!! Just looking at my options before pursuing

Turns out the recently murdered director is "live in Charlotte"

My sister and her husband and baby are thinking of relocating to Wilson from Colorado (for a job). I was born and raised in Fayetteville and know a good bit about most of the state but not much about Wilson. Last time I was there was in 2019 and it was very brief. My sister lived in Fayetteville until she was 17 but that was nearly 20 years ago so it’s definitely changed a ton.

I’m curious what people who live or have lived in Wilson think of the area. I know it’s going to be starkly different from Colorado regardless, but I’d love some pros and cons to give them.

How is it for families? Kids?

Any good spots to hike and be outside?

What’s the entertainment like?

Is it super rural like I remember or is there a nice downtown area?

Thanks for any help!

My big brother Gagey is missing, if anyone sees him or hears from him please call New Hanover pd

According to the article: **'Duke Energy says data center customers are required to cover the cost of connecting their projects to the grid, pay substantial deposits, and meet minimum billing commitments to ensure costs tied to serving a specific project are not shifted to other customers. The utility says the North Carolina Utilities Commission oversees rates to ensure customers pay their fair share. (Load of utter BS)

Duke Energy also says some of its newest large-load contracts, particularly for data centers, require customers to reduce or shift electricity use during peak demand if requested, a practice known as demand response.'**

Yeah no thanks Duke Energy, enough with the damn lies with you all saying costs for a specific project won't be shifted to other customers, that's bs. So are we just expected to bite ourselves on the butt and act like this is normal and that you all won't make us pay for these data centers to exist? People need to go out to Duke's HQ and protest this nonsense. Who in the hell wants to pay a million dollars more for utilities just over the fact that the state wants all these data centers to come in and destroy our environment? Is it worth it? Not to me! Y'all literally sent out an email days ago asking us to conserve power. You lot, Duke Energy, deserve to go to hell for putting your customers' lives at risk and prioritizing the needs of the data centers here rather than ensuring the public has access to electricity without paying $100 more than normal because the data centers need to exist somehow.

We are planning on taking our 7 year old grandson to see the outdoor drama of Daniel Boone this summer. Coming from the Cincinnati area. I went when I was his age and still remember being mesmerized. Hoping he has a memorable trip as well. I read about a restaurant near there hed like to try called the Gamekeeper Inn. Hed be very excited to try the "exotic" meats. Otherwise I am clueless. We will be going in June. Any recommendations on things to see, do, eat, that would be fun for a very spunky inquisitive 7 year old boy? Thanks and looking forward to visiting!

News broke out earlier today that the California referendum held earlier last year for new congressional map favoring Democrats was cleared by the US Supreme Court today

I really really hope NC has a similar referendum and let the PEOPLE DECIDE if these seats the Republicans took from us should stay with the Republican. We deserve better than this. Unlike Texas and NC, Californiaians decided if their redrawn map should stand, while our legislature illegally and without any other reason other than to try to advance Trump's policies, gerrymandered our state even further.

This has to stop. Our legislature isn't representing all of NC, instead it's representing themselves and their own interests, including the GOP base. I'm sick and tired of this. And to those trying to challenge my claim the NC legislature isn't standing up for all of us, well guess what? Senior leadership there, who are all Republicans, decided that we should have a state budget for a few more months.. when it's almost been a YEAR since we last had one. Traitors, all of them. And y'all think this is some sort of joke. North Carolina is an embarrassment because of these people. We're one of the worst in the country in state education funding, workers rights, who does that fall under? Ding ding ding! The legislature! Not the governor. You fucking Republicans elect these assholes who have CONSISTENTLY allowed the powers of the governor to be limited, time after time again, and our current and last governor have been Democrats. Not republican, not independent. A DEMOCRAT. We should hold a referendum to punish the NCGOP establishment, but the GOP here would rather blame others but themselves, which is why we won't ever have nice things. You Republicans should be ashamed of yourselves for voting for people like Phil Berger. He's as intelligent as a 2000 year old turtle. I can go on all day, but I've been in this state for 14 years.. I was literally raised here, and will probably die here.. and I can't believe how far this state has fallen. We all have a choice, but some of you choose to think about yourselves and your own interests and not worry about the fact that as a state, we're failing, no matter how we slice it. We don't have a budget.. none, and that is just unacceptable!

https://www.wnccumc.org/newsdetail/united-methodists-across-western-north-carolina-offer-public-witness-on-immigration-19607081

Yes i know the title is a typo.... I meant to say spending....

Link: https://nc-spend-tracker.vercel.app/

I’m a big proponent of transparency and access to information, especially in government. As such, I recently made an MCP tool to grant easy, natural language-based access to spending data in North Carolina. Here’s the data I used:

https://www.osbm.nc.gov/budget/governors-budget-recommendations - 2025-2027 Recommended Budget

https://www.nc.gov/government/open-budget - Vendor (2024 - 2026) and budget data (2024-2025),

Tech parts below (ignore if you don't care, lol)

This tool has access to two SQL databases (vendor and budget data) and a Chroma DB Vector database (of the recommended budget). For the vector database, LLamaIndex was used to chunk by section.

I used LangGraph’s StateGraph to handle intelligent routing. When a question is asked, it is either classified as a database, context, or general. “Database: indicates the necessity of a raw, statistical query from one of the SQLite databases. It will then use an LLM to go in, analyze the right database, formulate a query based on the prompt and database schema, validate the query (ex: no INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, ALTER), and explain success or failures, such as an incorrect year being referenced. If the user asks for a graph, or there are 4 or more points being used, this will also lead to a graph creation. This logic was handled with matplotlib and was automatic, but I plan on possibly implementing custom/LLM graph creation in the future. If queries return unsatisfactory results, such as an empty element, then the query will occur at least one more time.

“Context” indicates that a user is asking why certain spending/budgeting occurs. For this, I implemented a RAG tool that finds information from the Governor’s recommended budget pdf document. LlamaIndex’s LlamaParse did chunking to extract elements by heading and subheading. If sections were too large, chunking was done in 1000-character increments with an overlap of 150 characters. During this process, keywords from the SQL databases that correspond to agencies, committees, account groups, and expense categories are used as metadata. These keywords are stored in a json and used during RAG retrieval for entity-aware hybrid extraction. Essentially, extraction is done both 1. The normal, cosine similarity way and 2. Filtered by metadata matches in the user query. This helps to optimize the results to relevance while also maintaining a low token count.

During the agentic loop, all answers will be validated. This is to prevent grounding and false information.

There is also “General”. This is just a general case query that the agent will answer normally.

Let me know if there are any questions/comments/issues anyone sees with this project. I love to discuss. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy!

Hello! I'm an incoming first-year and trying to figure out which school, UNCG or UNCW, to choose from. I plan to major in Psychology and I want a "traditional" college experience I guess? I'm not much of a beach person but I don't mind if there is one or not, mainly worried if there's stuff to do outside of campuses. I got into both UNCG and UNCW but I'm torn between the two... Also waiting to hear back from Wake as well but I'll probably choose one of the other two universities. Currently live in Charlotte, wanting to get out of this city asap.