NV Energy is cutting off 49,000 Lake Tahoe homes by May 2027. The power is going to AI data centers.

NV Energy notified Liberty Utilities last month that it will stop providing wholesale electricity to the Tahoe Basin after May 2027. Liberty’s 49,000 California customers, the Tahoe-side residents who never appear on a Nevada utility’s books, lose 75% of their supply on that date. The capacity is going to the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, where Google, Apple, and Microsoft are racing to stand up new data-center campuses.

NV Energy spokesperson Katie Jo Collier told Fortune the move is “a planned transition for many years, not a reaction to recent developments.” The framing matters because the utility is also asking Nevada regulators to approve roughly 5,900 megawatts of new generation for those data centers by 2033. Both things are true: NV Energy has been planning for years, and what it’s been planning for is to feed Reno-area hyperscalers first.

The 75% number

Liberty Utilities is small. It serves about 49,000 customers across the California side of Lake Tahoe, from Truckee down to Kingvale. Its own solar generation covers roughly 25% of demand; NV Energy’s wholesale supply covers the rest. When that wholesale contract ends, Liberty has to source replacement power from outside Nevada (because NV Energy will not extend) and outside California’s main grid (because there is no transmission across the Sierra at the right capacity).

Liberty President Eric Schwarzrock estimates the cost to build a direct California-grid interconnect at “hundreds of millions of dollars.” That figure shows up on Tahoe-side ratepayer bills, not in California’s general fund. The RFP for replacement power opens this summer. Liberty’s own filings say the most likely buy is wholesale capacity from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, delivered back over NV Energy’s transmission lines, which is the same set of wires that will be priced for Reno data-center demand.

Tobi Tyler, vice chair of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, filed a procedural challenge at the California Public Utilities Commission, arguing that a procurement affecting 49,000 ratepayers warrants a formal proceeding with hearings, not just a rate-setting workshop. The CPUC has not ruled. The agency can set Liberty’s rates, but it cannot tell NV Energy to keep selling.

Where the power is going

The Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center sits about 50 miles east of the lake. It already hosts Tesla’s gigafactory and a Switch data center; Google has confirmed two new buildouts in the corridor; Apple’s Reno expansion has been zoning-approved for two years and is now reportedly accelerating. The Desert Research Institute’s analysis of NV Energy’s 2024 Integrated Resource Plan counted 12 separate data-center projects in Northern Nevada with combined demand reaching 5,900 megawatts by 2033. For scale: Hoover Dam’s installed capacity is 2,080 megawatts.

Nevada’s data centers consumed 22% of the state’s electricity in 2024, per the same DRI analysis. NV Energy’s own modeling projects 35% by 2030. There is no scenario in those filings where Liberty’s Tahoe load remains on NV Energy’s grid; that wholesale capacity is the lowest-margin, longest-distance delivery in the utility’s book, and the data-center contracts pay more.

Where the residents land

Danielle Hughes runs Tahoe Spark, a co-working operator in North Lake Tahoe. She told Fortune: “It’s like we don’t exist.” That captures the regulatory mismatch. Liberty’s customers are Californians under CPUC. NV Energy is regulated by Nevada’s PUC. The data centers it’s feeding are inside Storey and Lyon counties, also Nevada. No single body has jurisdiction over both the supply pivot and the resulting California ratepayer hit, which is why Liberty’s RFP and the CPUC filings are running on different clocks than the Nevada IRP.

Electrek pointed at the second-order effect: rooftop-solar and home-battery quotes around Tahoe and Truckee have jumped, with installers reporting waitlists they haven’t seen since the 2020 wildfire summer. The economics of going off-grid get better fast when “on-grid” stops being a guaranteed product.

What this means for you

If you live around Tahoe and you’re a Liberty customer, the May 2027 date is real. Your bill is also where the “hundreds of millions” in new transmission lands; budget for double-digit rate hikes in the 2027-2028 cycle, and start the rooftop-solar conversation now while the federal residential credit is still on the books. If you don’t live there, this is the first US case where a hyperscaler buildout has explicitly displaced an existing residential customer base from its grid. Virginia and Michigan votes have set caps; California can’t, because NV Energy isn’t its utility to regulate. Watch the CPUC filing this summer; whatever procedural posture it lands on becomes the template for the next dozen of these.