It’s no secret that AI data centers have been straining the grid. But Silicon Valley has been relatively insulated from it all, thanks to high land and power prices that have pushed hyperscaler projects elsewhere.
The tech elite might soon get a taste of the power crunch, though. The Bay Area’s vacationland, Lake Tahoe, has less than a year to find a new energy supplier.
By May 2027, Liberty Utilities’ agreement with NV Energy will come to an end. NV Energy’s power will be redirected elsewhere in Nevada, where data centers have been booming.
Both Liberty Utilities and NV Energy have said the wind down has been long planned; and NV Energy said data centers aren’t to blame. But it’s hard to see how they don’t play a role. NV Energy alone has requests for more than 22 gigawatts of load, which as a Bloomberg report points out, is more than 40 times what Lake Tahoe uses at its peak.
If data centers weren’t in play, it’s easy to see a world in which Liberty Utilities and NV Energy renew their contract. But with data center customers willing to pay whatever it takes to get electricity, it was inevitable that traditional customers in Lake Tahoe would be left out in the cold.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Energy markets are harsh environments these days, squeezed by surging demand and tightened supplies made worse by the Trump administration’s decision to attack Iran.
Lake Tahoe’s circumstances are compounded by the fact that its power lines share more connections with Nevada’s grid than California’s. That means the community must either find another power provider from within NV Energy’s territory or elsewhere in the West.
Given that NV Energy has already prioritized data centers over the mountain town, it’s likely that Lake Tahoe residents — and second-home owners — will have to find for another regional power producer.
That won’t be easy, either. One state over, in Utah, a county commission recently approved a 40,000-acre data center development that could consume up to 9 gigawatts of electricity when completed. Today, the entire state of Utah uses about 4 gigawatts. Demand at that scale is almost certain to drive prices up throughout the region.
The confluence of those factors means that Lake Tahoe will likely pay more for electricity next year than it does today. Locals will get hit the hardest, but people who own second homes in the area, many of whom are from Silicon Valley, might feel the pinch, too.
The injustice of the AI energy crunch is that the people who suffer the most have had very little say in the technology or its rollout. Lake Tahoe’s power predicament shows that’s starting to change, though probably not enough to make a difference.
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