My understanding is that for their own data centers (e.g. us-east-1 or us-central1) they are able to negotiate excellent costs of power by soliciting 100MW+ long term contracts, so they don't really need to. Energy is a lower margin business than tech, and they'd rather not get into the messy business of power generation.
For colocation data centers (e.g. Tokyo or Singapore regions), they're more reliant on the data center provider to do that negotiation, and they negotiate for rack space prices, so it's slightly different (thus why prices in regions can vary dramatically, though this is also labor, what the region can bear price-wise, etc.).
I assume they also have teams hedging power prices to keep those costs reasonable, while OVH and other tier 2's likely haven't reached that scale.
I'll briefly shill my product (crusoecloud.com) because we _do_ vertically integrate our power production and data centers by colocating modular data centers at oil wells (utilizing flare gas), wind/solar, etc. as a way of both keeping energy costs low/stable as well as solving related environmental issues (e.g. reducing methane emissions or providing base loads to renewables).
"I assume they also have teams hedging power prices to keep those costs reasonable"
How can hedging keep costs reasonable? It can help insulate you from short term price volatility, but you pay for that (as your counterparty will want to be paid for assuming the risk).
I read the article but don't see how it addresses my point.
In any case, let's assume OVH had engaged in a hedge transaction betting that energy prices would go up. That would have positive value for them. But the hedge would be settled financially.
It would not limit OVH's marginal cost of electricity. And your marginal cost is what matters when you're setting prices.
