Commentary: A surge in Nevada data center construction threatens the electricity supply for 49,000 Californians

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Those big data centers being built for artificial intelligence firms are in bad odor nationwide.Seven in 10 Americans oppose projects in their local communities, according to a recent Gallup poll.

More than a dozen, valued at some $64 billion, have been blocked or delayed by local opposition in recent years.But what happens when the people directly affected by these project plans don’t get a vote?Data centers did not influence this decision.— NV Energy, explaining its move to end service to 49,000 California customers.

But is it telling the truth?That’s the quandary faced by 49,000 residents living on the California side of Lake Tahoe, mostly in the city of South Lake Tahoe.The surge in construction of data centers in Nevada is prompting the Nevada utility that supplies 75% of the Californians’ electricity to cut them off next year.The California-regulated utility that carries the electricity over the state line to their homes and businesses has assured them that it will find alternative sources to protect them from losing service — but hasn’t promised that their rates won’t increase because of the transition.Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

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“It’s like we don’t exist,” Danielle Hughes, the head of a local energy nonprofit and an advocate for the customers, told me.The crisis facing those residents is just the latest in a long line of indignities they have suffered thanks to several unique characteristics of their energy market, Hughes says.

For one thing, they are permanent residents of th...