The Old Blog in the Desert

If the Money Holds Out

Once famous for silver strikes and sagebrush, Northern Nevada now fancies itself the promised land of the almighty data center. And if you believe the fine folks at NV Energy, this stretch of desert may soon play host to an electrical grid so large it would make Prometheus himself tip his hat in admiration—assuming, of course, that all goes according to plan, which, as history has often reminded us, it rarely does.

Doug Cannon, the president and chief prognosticator of NV Energy, recently shared his vision.

“It is absolutely foreseeable,” he declared with all the confidence of a man not personally footing the bill, “that the electric grid in Northern Nevada could double, triple, even quadruple in size.”

In plain speech, “foreseeable” means something a man can see with his own two eyes, but in the realm of industry and finance, it is more akin to tossing a coin into a well and hoping the water rises to meet it.

The cause of all this excitement is none other than the booming data-storage industry, which has taken a particular shine to the fine, sunbaked lands east of Reno-Sparks. A Denver outfit called Tract has declared it will rain down a hundred billion dollars upon Storey County over the next decade, while another concern, Vantage, has pledged a comparatively modest $245 million—small change, really, for a business that guzzles electricity the way a parched prospector guzzles whiskey.

But before you get too giddy imagining a future lit up like the Vegas Strip on New Year’s Eve, there is the small matter of producing all that power. NV Energy has made it abundantly clear that it will not rush into things.

No, sir.

They will build their empire of power lines only once the data-storage industry has put its money where its megawatts are. As Mr. Cannon sagely warns, it would be a terrible shame if NV Energy poured billions into new infrastructure only for these data companies to suddenly vanish like a mining town after the gold runs out, leaving good, ordinary folks of Nevada to pick up the tab.

It is no idle concern, as opposition to these data centers is already taking root. The Reno Planning Commission has proposed a temporary halt on new data center permits within city limits, and the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe chapter has thrown its hat into the ring, appealing the approval of a new center near North Virginia and Stead Boulevard. But worry not—out in Storey and Lyon counties, where the land is still wild and the local officials still welcoming, the march of progress continues unhindered.

Of course, the real question remains–where will all this power come from?

NV Energy places great faith in the Greenlink West project, a grand $4.2 billion scheme that aims to string a 350-mile transmission line between Las Vegas and Reno. Once complete, it promises to deliver a mighty 4,000 megawatts of clean energy, enough to keep the lights on in some 4.8 million homes. But as impressive as that may sound, Mr. Cannon concedes it still won’t be enough to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the data industry.

So, what about nuclear power? A fine thing, nuclear energy—clean, constant, and feared by many.

Cannon acknowledges its merits but assures Nevadans that NV Energy has no immediate plans to pursue it. “Let someone else take those development costs,” he says, with the shrewdness of a man who knows when to let another gambler take the first roll of the dice.

He does keep a watchful eye on newfangled small modular reactors, which promise to stack up neatly like poker chips and provide flexible energy solutions. But, alas, these require water too—a resource Nevada has in about the same quantity as a Sunday school picnic has whiskey.

And so, as the grand vision unfolds–a power grid of unprecedented size, a desert teeming with humming servers, and an industry promising untold billions—all balanced on the careful calculations of persons who, if history is any guide, will either be hailed as visionaries or remembered as those who bit off more than they could chew.

Either way, it promises to be a show worth watching.