49,000 Lake Tahoe residents will lose power to data centers | Hacker News Reader

49,000 Lake Tahoe residents will lose power to data centers

shacknews.com

46 pointsvrganj16 comments

What really bothers me with the data center boom is that prior to AI, water and electricity was constrained in a lot ways here in the states. “Our infrastructure cannot support electrification of cars and trucks!” “No watering your lawn or washing your car due to drought!”. But now for AI, we somehow miraculously can handle the amount of water and electricity it uses.

The secret ingredient is money. Money makes everything possible. Money can materialize energy and water from nowhere.

(well, it can't, but it allows you to buy them off poor people, who don't matter)

Isn't this how it always works? Not a snarky comment. This is a distinct and pervasive pattern. It also aligns quite well with many elitie globalist double standards.

I often encounter their proposals and briefly see the wisdom there in, but quickly remember it only applies to plebes, not them.

If you look at how oppressed much the population is in the US, it's pretty significant. From unfair taxation, small business hurdles, energy and utility regulation, arbitrary code enforcement regardless of actual quality, etc. And then there seems an unspoken rule enforcing centralization and penalizing anything that attempts otherwise.

It may seem a bit trite, but from my perspective, the public seems managed more as livestock than intelligent beings. I also think the new foisted age of data centers and AI will make this much more evident.

These constraints, at least for electricity, are usually in end distribution networks, not in production. High-powered datacenter would get (and pay for) its own substation/transformer from higher-voltage network, thus avoiding the limitation.

The fortune article is more informative and paints a long standing problem. A lot of the issue is that the region has competing government controls being spread across California for rates, Nevada for power, and feds for doing whatever they do. This is the energy company's side of it:

>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.

>But independent experts have questioned whether NV Energy’s own demand projections are reliable. In testimony filed with Nevada regulators in Oct. 2024, energy economist Rose Anderson of Synapse Energy Economics warned that NV Energy’s major-project load forecast is ‘highly uncertain’ and that existing customers could end up paying for infrastructure built to serve industrial demand that never materializes.

>In statement to Fortune, NV Energy reiterated its spokesperson’s statement about the transition having been planned for years. “It is important to note that the NV Energy’s wholesale agreement with Liberty Utilities was always intended to be temporary and transitional, with a clear timeline and multiple extensions over the years to support Liberty’s long-term planning efforts to secure its own access to energy supply. To ensure reliable ongoing service to Lake Tahoe customers, NV Energy agreed in 2025 to continue providing energy service to Liberty’s customers until their transmission access is available and/or until Greenlink is online.”

>“NV Energy has provided reliable service to Liberty’s customers in the Lake Tahoe Basin for years and fully intends to continue that commitment while Liberty secures its own transmission access and energy to supply those customers,” the utility added. “NV Energy has taken proactive steps to ensure there is no service disruption to Liberty customers, now or in the future.”

>Rates were already climbing

>The supply crisis arrives on top of an existing affordability fight. In its 2025 general rate case, Liberty originally sought a 19.1% revenue increase—about $37.51 more per month for the average residential customer, according to CPUC filings. The CPUC approved a smaller increase: 11.4%, with a 9.75% return on equity rather than Liberty’s requested 11%.

>The data centers are being used to power the AI models that have been taking the technology world by storm.

This isn't really true, is it? They are being built and designed to be AI-ready, but as of today, more electricity and usage is for cloud and video storage/streaming.

Interesting what the direction is leading. Imagine this is the case for the entire planet, all electricity goes to AI. Who's going to consume the AI without electricity?

This cannot be a reliable permanent solution.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun - Tom Lehrer

Good, and I know it's a safety risk and I shouldn't wish harm come to anyone, and I don't. But yes, good, to turn the tide of public opinion we need more stark examples of the dangers of the Great Devouring in the media before we have no natural resources left.

It seems crazy to me that we might literaly need to pass laws to require public utilities to provide for homes, before data centers. If we don't they will quite literally depopulate entire metropolitain areas.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123090

This is clickbait meant to make you angry - the move has been planned for more than ten years, well before datacenter power usage was an issue. NV Energy has made it clear that they're ending their wholesale agreement and for some reason, Liberty and Cali/Nevada have made no effort to fill the gap.

If you're pissed or worried about this, write your state reps and demand more power gen. Nuclear, solar, geothermal, whatever floats your boat - we need to build more of it all around.

If data centers are America's last hope for future prosperity why is the federal government not stepping in? Now rural communities are left holding the ball.

Remarkably it was Washington who built the power lines and hydrodams a 100 years ago but now crickets.

Because the party in control of the Federal government doesn't care about the well being of the populace and is focused entirely on lining their pockets and remaining in power.

I really really don't like the current administrations decisions and lack of integrity but I'm not sure this particular failure is only one side.

We need a much better system for making the government more transparently for the greater good and not for private gain at the public's expense.

It is overwhelmingly one sided. The entire Trump cabinet is full of unqualified sycophantic reality TV stars not even pretending to run a competent government. The Republican Congress runs on obstructionism.

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