Lake Tahoe power provider must replace Nevada supply after cutoff

In short: A Nevada utility says it will stop supplying most of Lake Tahoe’s electricity, and the local provider must find a replacement by May 2027.

What happened

Lake Tahoe’s local electricity provider, Liberty Utilities, gets about 75 percent of its power from NV Energy, a utility company based in Nevada. NV Energy has told Liberty it will stop providing that power, according to reporting cited by Ars Technica. The deadline for the Lake Tahoe area to line up a new supplier is May 2027.

The change affects about 49,000 California residents who live near Lake Tahoe, a tourist and ski area on the California and Nevada border. Liberty plans to look for replacement contracts from other suppliers that can meet California’s renewable energy rules.

Liberty told regulators that rising demand from new data centers is one reason NV Energy gave for ending the deal. Data centers are large buildings full of computers that run online services (you can think of them like warehouses for the internet). NV Energy planning documents cited by Fortune suggest about a dozen data center projects in northern Nevada could add 5,900 megawatts of demand by 2033.

NV Energy disputed the idea that data centers are the main driver, saying this shift is part of a long-running transition. After NV Energy sold its California assets to Liberty in 2009, the companies used temporary agreements so power could keep flowing while Liberty searched for other options.

Why it matters

This is a real-world example of how rising electricity demand can create conflicts between local communities and new industrial projects. It is also complicated because California residents pay rates set by California regulators, but the power lines they rely on are tied to Nevada’s system. NV Energy is building a new transmission line called Greenlink West, but it is scheduled to be ready around May 2027, which leaves little room for delays.

Source: Arstechnica