Nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe residents have to find a new power source after their energy source looks to redirect lines to data centers

Fortune ^ | 5/13/2026 | Catherina Gioino

[Ultra Sonic 007]

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...

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Government; US: California; US: Nevada
KEYWORDS: ai; aiharms; california; datacenters; electricity; laketahoe; nevada

[Ultra Sonic 007]

This feels like a social compact violation of some kind.

[DugwayDuke]

Think positive. The expanding need for AI power maybe the final straw forcing the environmentalists to stop their crusade for green energy.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

This is surprising if true. Most jurisdictions have regulations that require the building of additional capacity before data centers can be built. Studies must be done and then the power company builds capacity paid for by the data center developer. Despite these stories, most jurisdictions don’t want a data center coming in and overloading the system and taking power away from residents. Planning is involved.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Reno’s been an armpit until it was discovered to to be affordable to younger folk.

[BobL]

Well, people who live at Lake Tahoe also need data.

[Old Yeller]

Sounds like they aren’t wealthy enough to be exempt from that kind of treatment.

[Fido969]

Nuclear energy was BAAAADDDD until Gates and the rest of the New World Order crew figured out they needed a LOT of electricity to run AI.

Now it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. 30 large and small plants in the US are currently being planned.

[Twotone]

This feels like a social compact violation of some kind.

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Yes, it is. And didn’t Trump sign an EO to the effect that Data Centers need to provide for their own energy? Wasn’t that the point of giving them authority to build micro-nuclear energy facilities? Where are the state legislators who should be dealing with this?

[FreedomPoster]

>Where are the state legislators who should be dealing with this?

In the pocket of the corporations building the data centers?

[john drake]

Really? Although mo. rental rates are $1,500-$1,800; 3-8% lower than the national average, the avg. home price is in the $550,000-$670,000, compared to the national avg. of $350,000 to $450,000. Maybe cheaper than the crazy California prices, but....

[budj]

According to the article the Sierra Club has offered their advice. Looks like they want to use unicorn farts for electricity.

[john drake]

Bingo. Unfortunately it appears Nevada public officials are susceptible to corruption like....any other state. It doesn’t help that its history has hosted illegal activities for decades before other states capitulated (gambling), although prostitution remains legal there in 15 of the 17 counties. Or so it says in google searches.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

The root of the problem, per the article, is the fact we have interstate jurisdictional friction: "What makes Tahoe’s crisis so difficult is that no single regulator oversees the entire chain from power generation to customer bills. Liberty is a California investor-owned utility. Its customers live in California and pay rates approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. But Liberty’s grid sits inside NV Energy’s balancing authority, connects to NV Energy at 38 points, and relies entirely on Nevada transmission lines, according to a Liberty filing with state regulators. Liberty’s territory is a small sliver along California’s eastern border, sitting within NV Energy’s balancing zone rather than the California Independent System Operator, which coordinates the grid for virtually every other ratepayer in the state...The CPUC approves Liberty’s rates and procurement requests, but it cannot order NV Energy to keep selling wholesale power or dictate how Nevada plans for data centers. That falls to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates interstate transmission and wholesale electricity sales. With NV Energy and Nevada regulators controlling the upstream grid, the result is a system where California sets the rules, Nevada runs the wires, federal jurisdiction applies to the wholesale market, and no single entity is accountable for the outcome."

[ConservativeMind]

Reno was an armpit in the 1980s.

[Frank Drebin]

The data center energy crisis won’t last. It’s unfeasible long-term due to the increasing diminishing returns from “AI”. Hundreds have already been put on hold or outright cancelled. The future isn’t a data center around every corner.

[Twotone]

“...interstate jurisdictional friction...”

But this is exactly where the Federal Gov’t has jurisdiction to solve conflicts between the states. Someone has to have superior authority to stop what is an obvious infringement of the rights of long-time users of a utility.

We have a Department of Energy. I would think they could be involved.

[butlerweave]

What good are data collecting centers if there’s no one to collect data from ? LOL

[spintreebob]

“no single regulator”

Big government fails. So let’s have even bigger government.

[vivenne]

So a company is essentially stealing an entire jurisdiction’s ability to live life/survive for their own corporate gain? This sh*t needs to stop.

[Wayne07]

Of course it is not true... Data Centers are the new Jews - a leftist target to beat-up on, and the queer right likes to tag along.

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Liberty’s deadline for replacement power is tied to a major transmission project – Greenlink Nevada – that NV Energy is finishing; when that is complete, NV Energy will stop providing Liberty power, but Liberty will gain the rights to use that transmission infrastructure to reach other sources of replacement energy.