Data centers are cutting power to homes, driving homeowners to solar and batteries

A Nevada utility just told 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents that it’s redirecting 75% of their electricity supply to data centers — and they have less than a year to find a new power source. It’s one of the starkest examples yet of the AI boom’s impact on everyday Americans.

The case is extreme, but the pattern is not. Across the country, data center electricity demand is reshaping the grid, driving up rates, and pushing a growing number of homeowners toward solar and battery systems — not as complementary power, but as essential infrastructure.

Data centers are eating the grid

NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities — the small California company that services the region — that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason: NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers being built by Google, Apple, and Microsoft around the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno, according to Fortune.

The numbers are staggering. Data centers consumed 22% of Nevada’s electricity in 2024, and that share could rise to 35% by 2030. Twelve data center projects in Northern Nevada alone could drive 5,900 megawatts of new demand by 2033, according to Desert Research Institute analysis of NV Energy’s resource plan. In NV Energy’s own 2024 filing, about 75% of major-project load growth is attributed to data centers.