49,000 ...

Getty / Futurism

The Water Thief looms but in this case, it's power as data centers need it more then people, right?

The data center scramble feeding off the AI boom is no longer just raising utility prices for nearby civilians — it’s rerouting their utilities entirely.

Bombshell new reporting by Fortune details the plight of residents in Lake Tahoe, on the border of California and Nevada, whose electrical supplier is cutting them off in order to supply more energy to nearby data centers.

According to the magazine, Nevada-based utility company NV Energy gave residents notice that they’ll stop providing power after May of 2027. That leaves California-based energy transmission company Liberty Utilities with a major gap in its supply chain, because NV Energy supplied 75 percent of its total power.

To understand exactly what’s going on, we have to untangle the mess of transmission lines and energy suppliers that makes up the US electrical grid. Taking a look on Open Infrastructure Map, an open source tool for mapping the world’s utility infrastructure, it’s clear NV Energy supplies the bulk of residents on both the California and Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. In all, Fortune reports the decision could leave as many as 49,000 residents in the dark — literally.

“It’s like we don’t exist,” Danielle Hughes, a Lake Tahoe resident and supervisor with the California Energy Commission’s Efficiency Division, told Fortune.

The Water Thief which is about a future in which
"corporations own everything, even the air we breathe".

Sound familiar?