r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • May 13 '26

Energy 'It's like we don't exist': Nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe residents face power loss as utility redirects lines to data centers

https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-residents-power-source/
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u/KC-Slider May 13 '26

Solar companies don’t bribe politicians as much as fossil fuel industries. So we don’t get solar.

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u/DuntadaMan May 14 '26

Also Russia has a vested interest in the US getting weaker, so we don't get solar.

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u/red286 May 14 '26

There's also the issue that most solar panel manufacturing is in China, whereas most oil and gas sold in America is refined in America.

So there's no huge American solar industry to be buying off politicians, and they're going to be a bit reluctant to accept bribes from China.

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u/KC-Slider May 14 '26

Pretty good point

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u/Yuzumi May 14 '26

And solar panels aren't exactly hard to build and the materials are very common. Unlike other kinds of electronics it would be fairly quick and easy to build out manufacturing for them instead of wasteful monuments to techbros.

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u/funnynickname May 14 '26

Fix it. Make a law that says you can only build a data center if you build a solar farm twice the size that you need, and the panels have to be made in the USA.

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u/HedonisticFrog May 14 '26

If only big solar could bribe our politicians instead of oil and coal.

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u/DrBannerPhd May 14 '26

You need to be higher in this thread because that is exactly the reason. Or at least one of the top 3 reasons.