Lake Tahoe has less than a year to secure a new energy supplier before Liberty Utilities' agreement with NV Energy expires in May 2027. After the agreement ends, NV Energy's power will be redirected elsewhere in Nevada, where data centers have been expanding.

Both Liberty Utilities and NV Energy have said that the wind-down of their agreement has been long planned. NV Energy has said that data centers are not to blame for the conclusion of the arrangement.

NV Energy has received requests for more than 22 gigawatts of load, a figure that is over 40 times Lake Tahoe's peak electricity usage. NV Energy has prioritized data centers over Lake Tahoe residents.

Lake Tahoe's power lines share more connections with Nevada's grid than with California's. As a result, Lake Tahoe must find another power provider from within NV Energy's territory or elsewhere in the Western United States.

The search for a new supplier is taking place as artificial intelligence data centers have been straining the electrical grid across multiple regions. Silicon Valley has been relatively insulated from that strain, as high land and power prices have pushed hyperscaler projects to other locations.

The scale of new data center demand was illustrated by a recent decision in Utah, where a county commission approved a 40,000-acre data center development. When completed, the project could consume up to 9 gigawatts of electricity — more than double the approximately 4 gigawatts the entire state of Utah currently uses.