Lake Tahoe doesn't know where its power will come from after next ski season - and it's a major problem for the 49,000 residents who call the region home.

The Sierra Nevada tourist hub - home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors - is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom.

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. As in: the energy supplier for the Lake Tahoe region is telling the utility company that it has less than a year to find another power source.