Agreement Reached on Pacific Power Data Center Protections

In 2025, the Oregon Legislature passed the POWER Act to help utilities rein in data centers’ added costs to Oregonians’ energy bills. Last fall, Portland General Electric began the work to roll out this new law in practice. In January, Pacific Power started a similar process for its customers. Now, Pacific Power customers have a strong suite of protections against data centers’ impact on our energy bills.

The fight is not over, though. Already, the Data Center Coalition requested the Commission reconsider its order to stop similar protections for PGE customers from taking effect. Regulators rejected this attempt in part,  though we expect that the data center industry group will move this to the Oregon Court of Appeals soon. CUB will be there to defend Oregonians every step of the way, no matter what challenge comes next.

Want even more information? See the full docket (UE 463), including the settlement agreement, on the PUC’s website.

A Long Road to a Strong Finish

Back in April, CUB had some serious concerns about the direction Pacific Power was headed in with data center protections. We raised the alarm bells that Pacific Power was not providing clear information about how it intended to protect Oregonians and hold data centers accountable for their own energy use.

But after months of negotiations, public comment from hundreds of CUB supporters, and a lot of advocates coming together, we won. Now, Pacific Power has some of the strongest utility consumer protections against data centers in Oregon.

“With a long line of data centers waiting at Pacific Power’s door, I’m confident that we have the right protections at the right time for customers. We were able to stop more extreme impacts on customers’ bills just in time.”
- Bob Jenks, Executive Director of Oregon CUB

Over the summer, CUB participated in lengthy negotiations between Pacific Power, Public Utility Commission Staff, data centers, and other consumer advocacy groups. As of September, we have reached a strong agreement for new data center protections.

New Protections Against Data Centers for Pacific Power Households

As of September, Pacific Power has reached a new agreement on how it will protect home and small business customers from the impacts of data centers. CUB is pleased to announce that this deal is set to be the strongest from a for-profit electric utility yet.

Once approved, new Pacific Power data centers will be held responsible for their own energy costs:

• All costs for all distribution investments (local poles/wires)
• All costs for all energy generation/storage (power plants, batteries, etc.)
• All costs for power costs (purchased energy from the market or fuel costs)
• Fairly shared costs for shared transmission (longer distance poles/wires, substations)

Generation: Data centers will be responsible for all new generation costs that are created to serve them. This will remain true, even if there’s a co-benefit to other customers. Data centers will also be held responsible for any upgrades that are needed to ensure reliable service for everyone. And data centers will be responsible for costs to meet 100% clean energy requirements from state law (HB 2021).

Transmission: For shared transmission costs, who pays will be directly linked to how much different customer groups are using. So if a 50MW data center is using a 100MW transmission line, it would pay for 50% of those costs. (Note that this is a different approach than what PGE has taken, which is based on growth of customer groups, not usage.)

Additional Household Customer Benefits: Data centers over 100 MW will also have to pay a small surcharge to fund energy efficiency upgrades for low-income households. Additionally, data centers will be required to have flexible energy use, protecting Oregonians from blackouts.

All of these new protections will be baked into special contracts that Pacific Power signs with new data centers. The terms of these contracts will be reviewed by both regulators at the Oregon Public Utility Commission and advocates, like CUB. Having standardized contracts with terms agreed to by consumer advocates is a major win, especially for an industry like data centers that tends to favor very opaque nondisclosure agreements with utility companies.

This agreement comes out of the 2025 Oregon POWER Act, with final approval from regulators expected in October.

Read More: POWER Act Blog

This deal is supported by Pacific Power, Commission Staff, CUB, and Community Energy Project, Climate Solutions, Oregon Environmental Council, and Sierra Club. We anticipate the Data Center Coalition will object to the agreement.

Focusing on New Data Centers First

While these new rules will only apply to new data centers, CUB is confident that these were the most important protections to put in place. Pacific Power only has a very small number of existing data centers, but a long line of new data centers waiting to come online.

Importantly, this means that customers should not expect a rate decrease from this decision. While this was the case with PGE’s data center regulation process over the summer, that approach was focused primarily on existing data centers on PGE’s system. Because Pacific Power’s approach is forward-looking, there will not be any rate adjustments for existing customers.

Pacific Power is in a much different position than many other utilities with data centers. Because there are only a few data centers on its system, the impacts seem to be relatively small. And some of these existing data centers will be moved into the new special contracts soon, solving many of these issues.
For those who remain in the existing data center category, CUB is confident that there are enough guardrails to prevent major impacts on other customers in the near term:

• Pacific Power data centers are located away from other customers, so they are already isolated on the grid
• Pacific Power has required data centers to make many investments themselves, preventing costs for the utility (and other customers)
• Pacific Power has already set up some protections with regulators, including penalties for data centers going outside of expected electricity usage

But the sheer number of data centers that are wanting to come online in Oregon have the potential to raise costs to everyone. By focusing on stopping the bigger problem before it starts, Pacific Power households will be much better protected than starting with a small problem now.

The next step is to address the few existing data centers on Pacific Power’s system. CUB expects this process to begin as early as summer 2027. It is uncertain if this process will come with any adjustments to other customers’ billing rates, since the full impact is to be determined.

Pacific Power Went Beyond PGE’s Precedent

When comparing the process of adding protections from data centers between PGE and Pacific Power, PGE has left a lot to be desired.

This process of adding guardrails began way back in 2023, when the impact of data centers was first being raised. Pacific Power completed its first large load investigation relatively quickly. The utility added new protections for other customers by the next year. By comparison, PGE asked for continual delays for years, not adding any protections against data centers until summer 2026.

PGE’s delays have come at the cost of its household and small business customers. As these delays kept going for years, PGE kept making investments for data centers and racking up costs. If they had taken action sooner, we might not have been in such hot water going into this year.

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