Katie Jo Collier, a spokesperson for the utility, said the transition was rooted in a longtime understanding with Liberty “well before data center load growth was a consideration,” calling it “a planned transition for many years, not a reaction to recent developments.” NV Energy sold its California electric assets to Liberty in 2009 and agreed to keep supplying power temporarily. That arrangement was extended in 2015, again in 2020, and once more in late 2025, and each time because Liberty had not yet secured an independent supply, a timeline corroborated by regulatory documents reviewed by Fortune.
I feel as a utility company you have the obligation to supply the area you operate in with energy. Power distribution on the electricity net is not something you can steer left or right. You attribute to it and people may use that what's available. If they sold off their energy rights to a higher bidder and kept renewing the deal until the city got an offer that is a good thing and I applaud them for it. However it just feels wrong to put 49k people in the dark.
The tourist and ski resort town of Lake Tahoe must scramble to find a new energy supplier by May 2027—the result of a Nevada utility company saying it needs the power capacity in part for new data centers. The resulting energy crisis impacts 49,000 California residents who live near Lake Tahoe, nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the border between California and Nevada.
Lake Tahoe’s local electricity provider, California-based Liberty Utilities, has been obtaining 75 percent of its power from the Nevada-based company NV Energy. But the latter has said it will stop providing power to the Lake Tahoe region by May 2027, according to extensive reporting by Fortune.
I heard about this from MoistCr1TiKaL of all sources, and the idea that an energy supplier can flip the middle finger to a town of 450,000 residents and leave them without power, all because they want to chase the AI gold rush is appalling. His video really opened my eyes to how openly and brazenly corrupt US politics is.
ShroudedScribe | 14 days ago
This isn't the full story.
From https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-residents-power-source/
I'm all for bashing the insane growth of data centers but this isn't the reason things are going down this way.
X08 | 14 days ago
I feel as a utility company you have the obligation to supply the area you operate in with energy. Power distribution on the electricity net is not something you can steer left or right. You attribute to it and people may use that what's available. If they sold off their energy rights to a higher bidder and kept renewing the deal until the city got an offer that is a good thing and I applaud them for it. However it just feels wrong to put 49k people in the dark.
stu2b50 | 14 days ago
I mean they don’t operate in that area. They sold the grid to Liberty. They’re part of Nevada, not California.
This feels more like negligence from Liberty and the California state government than anything else.
[OP] redwall_hp | 14 days ago
Bullmaestro | 13 days ago
I heard about this from MoistCr1TiKaL of all sources, and the idea that an energy supplier can flip the middle finger to a town of 450,000 residents and leave them without power, all because they want to chase the AI gold rush is appalling. His video really opened my eyes to how openly and brazenly corrupt US politics is.
X08 | 14 days ago
#PeopleOverProfits
I can't really say anything else about it.