Nevada regulators have signed off on a 510-megawatt natural gas power plant that Switch plans to build and use near the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, clearing the way for construction to begin as early as the first quarter of 2027. The approval, handed down during a regular agenda meeting on Tuesday, makes Switch the latest data-center operator in the state to pursue its own natural-gas generation; the proposed plant is front-of-meter.
The Public Utilities Commission's sign-off confirms what Switch disclosed last month: that the company is the intended off-taker and ultimate owner of the plant, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The plant will sit on roughly 20 acres at the former Sierra Biofuels Refinery in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, running nine gas turbines with Switch as the facility's primary user. Construction is expected to wrap in 2029, per the same report.
Water use has emerged as one of the more striking figures tied to the project. The plant is expected to draw between 10,000 and 20,000 gallons per day during construction and as much as 145 acre-feet of water annually once it's running — equivalent to roughly 47 million gallons a year over its life cycle, the station's report notes. Emissions estimates from the underlying application, reviewed separately by Nevada Current, put the plant's potential output at up to 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — roughly equal to the emissions from 453,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for a year.
Why Data Centers Are Building Their Own Power Plants
Why Data Centers Are Building Their Own Power Plants Switch's project is part of a broader pattern across northern Nevada, where data center developers are increasingly proposing power plants to address long waits tied to connecting to the regional grid. Getting connected through conventional channels can take two to three years or longer if new utility infrastructure has to be built, and gas turbines have become the fastest — though not the cheapest or cleanest — option for operators racing to get online, per the Review-Journal's reporting. Solar, wind and batteries remain the cheapest way to generate bulk power, but they can't always be built fast enough to meet the immediate demand data centers are creating.
NV Energy has acknowledged it currently lacks the infrastructure to immediately serve large data center demand in the region, which helps explain why companies like Switch are pursuing new generation projects. The utility's own 2026 integrated resource plan, covering a 20-year outlook, lays out just how fast that demand is growing: the company has fielded about 22,000 megawatts of interest inquiries from data centers and has already signed roughly 6 gigawatts of agreements to support interconnection work, according to the filing reviewed by NV Energy. About 84 percent of those signed agreements, nearly 5 gigawatts, are tied to large-load customers in northern Nevada specifically.
Projections Show Data Centers Reshaping Nevada's Grid
NV Energy's preferred plan calls for meeting future shortfalls with a mix of 4,370 megawatts of solar, 5,405 megawatts of battery storage, 180 megawatts of geothermal generation and 1,223 megawatts of new natural gas combustion turbines — though the filing makes clear these are proposed additions still pending commission approval, not resources already locked in. The utility projects that data centers, which account for about 5 percent of Nevada's electricity sales today, will balloon to 64 percent of sales by 2046. Existing and approved systemwide generating capacity is expected to reach roughly 10 gigawatts by 2050, but Nevada's total capacity needs could exceed 20 gigawatts by that year if projected data-center demand materializes, per the Review-Journal.
Switch's plant is the third such data-center gas project to seek approval in Nevada this year. Nexus Fulcrum LLC filed its own application with the commission in June for a 510-megawatt plant at the same Tahoe-Reno-area site, initially naming an unnamed single off-taker, according to The Nevada Independent. And in September, the commission approved two temporary natural gas plants from Fleet Data Centers — a 144-megawatt plant and a 218-megawatt plant, totaling 362 megawatts — intended to power two separate data centers, as reported by the Review-Journal. Fleet has said it expects those temporary plants to run for about two to three years until NV Energy can deliver permanent utility service to the site, according to Nevada Current. That September approval followed hours of public comment opposing the approach.
Pipeline Expansion Still Needs Federal Sign-Off
Switch's gas supply hinges on a separate infrastructure project that hasn't yet cleared its own regulatory hurdles. The plant would be supplied by a proposed Great Basin pipeline expansion with a projected lifespan of 30 years or more, and the expansion could ultimately support an estimated 5,000 megawatts of new gas-powered generation across the region, per Nevada Current's reporting. Great Basin expects that expansion to enter service in November 2028, but the project still requires formal approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before construction can begin.
The scope of that pipeline work remains somewhat unsettled in the public record. Nevada Current has reported the expansion would involve about 230 miles of new or expanded pipeline running through Churchill, Humboldt, Lyon, Pershing, Storey and Washoe counties, while Pipeline & Gas Journal has described the project as roughly 195 miles of new 42-inch pipeline paired with the retirement of about 142 miles of existing line. It's not clear from the available filings why the two figures differ. Either way, the pipeline's fate — and by extension, part of Switch's long-term gas supply — now rests with federal regulators rather than Nevada's commission.
