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Lake Tahoe’s longtime power supplier, NV Energy, will cut off the region next year. It has said data centers are driving “unprecedented” demand.
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A utility serving 49,000 Lake Tahoe customers has a little over a year to find a new source for 75% of its power. Liberty Utilities, one of California’s three smaller investor-owned power companies, alerted regulators this month that its main power supplier won’t continue its contract after May 2027.
Liberty, whose territory sits on the border of California and Nevada, generates about 25% of its power from solar facilities in Nevada. The rest is purchased through Nevada-based NV Energy, which said that it wouldn’t be able to continue this arrangement because of its “own resource needs,” Liberty told regulators this month.
“Our absolute goal is twofold: We want to achieve our renewable requirements in the state, and we also want it to be as affordable as possible,” Eric Schwarzrock, president of Liberty, said.
The replacement power is most likely to come from sources outside of California. Liberty is not physically connected to California’s energy market, which serves the state’s other electric utilities. Instead, its transmission lines come from Nevada.
Liberty’s deadline for replacement power is tied to a major transmission project – Greenlink Nevada – that NV Energy is finishing; when that is complete, NV Energy will stop providing Liberty power, but Liberty will gain the rights to use that transmission infrastructure to reach other sources of replacement energy.
In a statement, NV Energy said it is “aware of Liberty Utilities’ advice letter to California regulators and is currently reviewing it.”
Data centers have driven requests to triple the company’s peak capacity, NV Energy’s director of business development said at a regional business event in September, as first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “These are unprecedented times,” he said during a panel discussion of the centers, adding, “we are excited to serve this load” but “we cannot impact our existing customer base.”
Liberty’s letter to the California Public Utilities Commission about the change also sought approval to undertake a process for replacing the power and how it would rank proposals it receives, namely seeking the lowest-cost power. Once the commission approves its requests, commission spokesperson Terrie Prosper said, Liberty would choose its new energy supplier and seek approval from the regulator on the final contract.
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Liberty, Schwarzrock said, plans to bid its contract out to “anybody and everybody,” focusing first on meeting its renewable energy requirements California sets. The utility’s unusual peak season, he said, makes it a favorable partner for energy providers. Whereas most utilities in the region peak in summer, when it’s hottest, Liberty’s peak season is around Christmas when those with second homes at Lake Tahoe arrive for the winter ski season.
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