In May 2026, people spread a rumor online that communities around Lake Tahoe, which is on the border between California and Nevada, may lose power because their supply will be redirected to data centers.
According to one post (archived), the change could affect about 50,000 customers:
Nearly 50,000 people in the Lake Tahoe area have been told that their utility will stop providing power to them, because it's redirecting that power to data centers.
NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied most of Lake Tahoe's electricity for decades, says that next year it will stop servicing homes in the area, and instead direct that electricity to the growing demand from Nevada data centers.
Northern Nevada is one of the fastest-growing data-center corridors in the country.
(X user @MorePerfectUS)
The claim also appeared in posts on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers searched the site and emailed us asking whether the claim was true.
The claim that 50,000 residents on the California side of Lake Tahoe will lose their power supply because its electric utility is redirecting it to data centers contains a mixture of true, false and undetermined information
Liberty Utilities is searching for a new energy supplier to make up for the loss but does not yet have one, as of this writing. NV Energy told a local news outlet that the two companies have been planning this transition for years. Currently, Liberty Utilities is telling customers they will not lose power during this process.
This is an ongoing transition that is still subject to change.
Snopes has reached out to Liberty Utilities and NV Energy by email with questions regarding NV's Energy motivation for no longer providing power to Liberty Utilities. We'll update this story if we receive replies.
Lake Tahoe communities' power supply
Lake Tahoe is on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, right on the California-Nevada state line. That leaves the communities on the California side of the lake separated from the rest of California by the mountain range.
Before Liberty Utilities took over service for the California Lake Tahoe communities, NV Energy directly serviced the region (PDF Page 12). On a map of the U.S. electric transmission lines from 2024, there are no lines connecting the Lake Tahoe region to the rest of California's power grid.
When Liberty Utilities replaced NV Energy as the Lake Tahoe area's electric utility on Jan. 1, 2011 (PDF Page 11), the two energy companies agreed that Liberty Utilities would buy power it needed directly from NV Energy until at least Dec. 31, 2015, according to documentation on Liberty Utilities' website. Before that agreement expired, Liberty Utilities and NV Energy extended the agreement to May 2022 (PDF Page 34).
A map from the California Energy Commission recognizes that the Lake Tahoe area is on NV Energy's grid, not California's.
On March 6, 2026, Liberty Utilities reported it must seek a new power supplier because NV Energy declined to extend the agreement beyond May 2027 (PDF Page 2). A May 2026
NV Energy and data centers
Both electric utilities have made clear in filings to their state utility commissions that NV Energy is losing the capacity to sell power to Liberty Utilities because of a boom in data centers in northern Nevada.
In its
In NV Energy's recent filing, it acknowledged the power industry is experiencing "unprecedented in recent memory" growth in energy loads, driven by data centers supporting the development of artificial intelligence products (PDF Page 3).
The filing said northern Nevada is a particularly sought-after location for data centers. NV Energy said its peak load in 2025 was just over 8,000 megawatts (PDF Page 4) between its two companies and that 39 data center projects in Nevada have requested 16,530 megawatts of capacity and energy alone (PDF Page 13).
NV Energy told South Tahoe Now, a local news organization, that it was understood "from the beginning" that Liberty Utilities would eventually secure its own energy supply to be independent from NV Energy. And to its credit, Liberty Utilities has told customers that it began the process of shifting towards getting its energy supply from the market in 2019.
What happens next for electricity in Lake Tahoe
Nothing is changing in the immediate future. As mentioned above, NV Energy plans on extending Liberty Utilities' contract to Dec. 31, 2027.
Even beyond then, Liberty Utilities has stressed to its customers that they will not lose electricity over this transition: One notice available on the company's website reads, "Liberty customers will not be left without service as a result of this transition. NV Energy will continue to provide energy until Liberty has its own transmission access in place."
In the March 6 Liberty Utilities request, the company wrote that the agreement would end when the "Greenlink-West transmission project" became operational, even if that didn't happen until after the original May 2027 deadline. That's the reason the contract is being extended to Dec. 31, 2027: NV Energy says its new projected in-service date for Greenlink West is Dec. 31, 2027.
Greenlink is an NV Energy project to connect two high-power transmission lines from other parts of the state to the Reno/Lake Tahoe area. Greenlink West will run from Las Vegas to the Lake Tahoe area. A second line, Greenlink North, will run from the eastern part of Nevada to the area, which is on the state's western border.
These transmission lines are important for Liberty Utilities to find an alternative supplier. Even when NV Energy stops supplying Liberty Utilities, it will run the supply from an outside provider through these lines for Liberty Utilities, according to the companies' agreement.
As of right now, Liberty Utilities says it can't connect with the California grid because the Sierra Nevada Mountains remain a prohibitive barrier (PDF Page 4). That leaves NV Energy's transmission lines through Nevada as the isolated region's only connection to outside power.