Oregon officially hikes electric rates for data centers in PGE territory
Oregon officially hikes electric rates for data centers in PGE territory
Learn about Salem’s neighborhood electric vehicle chargers
Portland General Electric began installing 30 Type 2 Neighborhood EV Chargers in 2023. Residents can locate chargers in Salem using the OpConnect app.
Electric rates will officially go down for most Portland General Electric customers while data centers will pay significantly more under the rates approved by the Public Utility Commission approved July 7.
Rates will drop by 1.3% for residential PGE customers July 8, which will save the average residential rate-payer about $1.91 per month, the utility said. Commercial customers will experience a 2.1% drop and industrial customers will experience a 1.4% decrease.
Meanwhile, rates for data centers will go up 29%. That is in accordance with the POWER Act, a law passed in 2025 to set separate rates for data centers and requires them to enter into 10-year contracts to offset their large usage of the electric grid.
“These changes ensure that costs created by data centers in PGE’s territory are more accurately reflected in their rates,” PUC Chair Letha Tawney said in a statement. “By putting this structure in place now, we are getting ahead of a bigger issue, enabling responsible data centers to pay their own way, and protecting customers from higher costs in the future.”
PGE has approximately 963,000 customers in Oregon, including Salem, Woodburn, Silverton and most of the Portland Metro area.
Investor-owned utilities are regulated by the PUC in exchange for exclusive territories.
Data centers become their own class under 2025 law
The POWER Act separated data centers into their own category for electricity rates. PGE is the first company to set new rates under that law, which was the first of its kind in the United States.
Pacific Power, which has 623,000 customers in Oregon, is in the process of its data center rates.
There are 125 data centers in Oregon, according to datacentermap.com. A dozen more are in various stages of planning.
“Today’s decision is a win for Oregonians,” Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement. “The POWER Act was intended to ensure fairness and accountability when large energy users, like data centers, take up more load on Oregon’s electrical grid. We must continue to do whatever we can to keep working families and small businesses from absorbing the costs of data center energy use.”
PGE submitted its proposal on separating rates on June 3, but the PUC delayed implementation so its staff could review the hundreds of pages in the filing.
The rates changes were the same as proposed by PGE, except commercial customers were proposed a 2.2% decrease and industrial customers were proposed to have a 1.5% decrease.
“A couple years ago, CUB had this crazy idea that data centers should pay the cost associated with their electric usage, instead of having some of those costs spread to other customers,” the Oregon Citizens Utility Board said in a statement.
“Asking our neighbors who are on the front line of the energy affordability crisis to pay costs to serve data centers is unacceptable.”
Bill Poehler covers Marion and Polk County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com