Great and Terrible things

[busker]

It’s a “nothing burger” as the yanks call it.
There’s no shortage of sunlight for solar energy

Maybe the rest of the world is saner but as usual the US is bumbling forward without foresight.

Fortune article on Lake Tahoe

Actually, the US is doing quite well for itself
The article that you shared talks about a situation that actually has nothing to do with data centres
Sure, there’s demand for electricity from a DC, but it could’ve also been demand from an aluminium smelter or any new power hungry industry
In the story, Lake Tahoe gets its power from a Cali utility but has a private company that runs its own network inside the Lake Tahoe region including billing and metering with the transmission being owned by Nevada.
Because the Lake Tahoe region is not within the utility’s area of supply it has no obligation to keep supplying if a better commercial opportunity came its way.
This sounds to me like a market design problem (the American electricity market has been frozen in a state of semi-regulation and semi-competition since the collapse of Enron), or simply the complacency of the privately owned network in Lake Tahoe. Perhaps their PR team is at work. 


99% of the problems you read about in the media are manufactured outrage. The really difficult problems are subtle and beyond the grasp of most journalists. They’re also boring because the solution lies in the detail. 
The general belief in free markets, competition, individual liberty, private property and sensible regulation is strong in America, which is what has kept it going while the rest of the west has been collapsing trying to run a welfare state. This is despite the general low awareness of the American public, the terrible cuisine, and a large section of the population that is relatively old and absolutely unintelligent. The basic template is still there for economic resilience, from which everything elese flows.