Data center energy and water needs raise concerns

Data center companies want to triple Nevada’s energy capacity to meet the power demands of a rapidly growing industry.

The data center boom has been felt across the U.S. as tech companies are increasingly looking to keep up with an AI revolution.

“These are unprecedented times,” said Jeff Brigger, director of business development & major accounts at NV Energy on a recent data center panel. “We are excited to serve this load, we think there's huge opportunity here to do so… But we have to look at it from the perspective that we cannot impact our existing customer base with these types of projects.”

Brigger explained that the current maximum demand of the state’s energy grid is about 9,000 megawatts, which NV Energy has already agreed to increase by roughly half, or 4-5,000 MW. On top of that, there are 21,000 to 22,000 MW of requested load for the grid.

“We’re going to have to build it as quickly as possible because we get pressure from our customers to do so,” said Brigger. “And rightfully so – this is the cutting edge of new technology.”

But the new demand comes at an awkward time for Nevada. Water access in the state is under severe threat by a dwindling Colorado River.

Water by the hundreds of millions of gallons is commonly used by data centers to effectively cool the hard working computers. While a law to ban the most water wasteful centers -- referred to as evaporative cooling -- was shot down in 2024, no such data centers have been approved since February of last year.

For their part, NV Energy is already working on expanding 5,000 MW of capacity with its Greenlink expansions, set to partially be available in 2027.

“If we hadn’t built that or planned that infrastructure we’d probably be years behind in serving this load, because of the magnitude that’s being asked of us,” Brigger said at the conference.

NV Energy was recently approved to charge its Southern Nevada customers more on their energy bill to help fund the Greenlink project. At the conference, Brigger said they were working with the big tech companies looking to build the data centers to help pay for the upgrades themselves.

It is unclear how much of the requested load Nevada will expand to fulfill, and whether NV Energy will manage to keep prices reasonable for its residential customers.