Lake Tahoe doesn’t know where its power will come from after next ski season—and it’s a major problem for the 49,000 residents who call the region home.
The Sierra Nevada tourist hub—home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors—is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom.
NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities—the small California company that services the region—that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers. As in: the energy supplier for the Lake Tahoe region is telling the utility company that it has less than a year to find another power source.
Northern Nevada has become one of the fastest-growing data-center corridors in the country. Google, Apple, and Microsoft have either built or are planning facilities around the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno. The Desert Research Institute, using data from NV Energy’s 2024 Integrated Resource Plan, found that the 12 data center projects located overwhelmingly in Northern Nevada could drive 5,900 megawatts of new demand by 2033. At a regional business event last fall, NV Energy’s director of business development called the moment “unprecedented,” saying the company was eager to serve the new industrial load but that it would not “impact our existing customer base.”
But Liberty’s 49,000 California customers may already be bearing the cost. Liberty Utilities generates about 25% of its power from solar facilities it owns in Nevada. The other 75% comes from NV Energy, and that source will no longer be supplied to the region by this time next year.
“It’s like we don’t exist,” Danielle Hughes told Fortune. Hughes is a North Lake Tahoe resident, CEO of the nonprofit Tahoe Spark, and a supervisor within the California Energy Commission’s Efficiency Division.
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Actually funny that this happens to a bunch of yuppies first.
: “Sorry poors, but you’re not New ProductTM. You have to take one for the team and live in squalor! Don’t be mad, it’s only fair! I bought the energy fair and square!”Definitely no poors living on Lake Tahoe. This is a real
situation in my opinion.
I don’t need to be Muad’Dib to know those datacenters will enter the :cool-zone:
When will the lambs rise up against the wolf?
