Data centers want more power than Nevada has ever used. Who pays to build it?

This is all of it.

On the hottest afternoon of the year, Nevada draws about megawatts.[1] Every air conditioner, casino floor and pump, at once. That block is the most power the state has ever needed.

Graphic: a grid of small squares, one per 100 megawatts, filling in to show Nevada's peak demand.

Now picture one customer who wants more than that.

The biggest build in Nevada's history.

Data centers have asked NV Energy about roughly megawatts of new demand. NV Energy's phrase is "interest inquiries."[2] About MW has signed connection agreements.[3] Even the signed part is larger than anything Nevada has built before.

Graphic: beside today's grid, an outline of the requested capacity, more than twice as large, with the signed portion filled in.

So who pays to build it: the data centers, or you?

Build more, earn more.

A monopoly can't set prices, so the regulator sets them. NV Energy recovers what it builds, plus about % a year on the equity it invests, for decades.[4] Everything approved goes into one pot, the rate base. Every customer's bill draws from it.

Graphic: one square gains a price tag and drops into a pot labelled rate base, which feeds a row of houses, one of them marked "you".

Which of the new squares go into that pot?

Wires are theirs. Power is everyone's.

A data center needs two things: wires to the site, and power to fill them. Under NV Energy's connection rules the customer funds the wires: substation, transmission, high-voltage lines.[3] The plants and power purchases are different. In NV Energy's own words, those agreements "do not address generation and electric supply." By default that goes into the rate base. Yours.[5]

Graphic: the signed squares flow into two pots. A small gold pot, their invoice, holds the wires. A large terracotta pot, rate base, holds the power and feeds every customer.

Is that really how it lands on my bill?

Costs flow down. Risk stays down.

In 2022 natural gas spiked and every dollar passed straight to your bill.[6] NV Energy's return didn't move. This October it runs in reverse: bills drop about %. And since February, about $ a month on Southern Nevada bills pays for Greenlink, a $ billion transmission line, while it is still being built.[7] Cost lands on the customer who cannot leave.[8]

Graphic: three schematic bills. The base layer stays flat; the fuel layer jumps in 2022 and eases in October 2026; a new-build layer appears in 2026 for Greenlink; a line for the utility's return stays flat above all three. A chip notes the 2018 vote that kept retail choice off the table.

Didn't NV Energy promise data centers would pay their own way?

Said to legislators. Not written in a tariff.

NV Energy told a legislative committee this year that large users "need to be responsible for paying their own way."[9] Testimony is not a tariff. The tell: in May, Microsoft filed its own "ratepayer protection tariff," asking the commission to make every data center pay for its own plants and lines.[10] When a trillion-dollar company drafts the rule, the rule isn't written yet.

Graphic: the rate-base pot is covered with hatching labelled "not decided", beside two document cards: NV Energy's testimony, and Microsoft's May 2026 filing in Docket 20-08014.

Then who decides, and when?

Wires: them. Power: you, by default. A new rule is on the desk.

NV Energy has proposed a contract, the Large Load Electric Service Agreement, that would make data centers pay up front for the plants and lines built to serve them.[11] It sits in Docket . NV Energy asked for a ruling on the framework by ; the decision on the full plan is expected by year's end.[12] Until then, the default stands. On August 7 the commission declined to hold its own consumer session on this docket, noting that public comments are not evidence.[13] The state's consumer advocate is collecting them instead. You can't switch providers. You can answer the survey.

Graphic: today's grid returns beside the new capacity, now coloured by who pays: a thin gold strip the data centers fund, a large terracotta block in everyone's rate base, and a hatched region still undecided.