Pacific Power Lacks A Clear Data Center Plan

Over the next six months, Pacific Power will begin to reckon with Oregon’s largest and fastest-growing energy users: data centers.

In 2025, the Oregon Legislature passed the POWER Act to help utilities rein in data centers’ adding 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.

The problem: Pacific Power is not providing clear information about how it intends to protect Oregonians and hold data centers accountable for their own energy use.

POWER Act (HB 3546)

Over the past decade, data centers have rapidly expanded in Oregon, driving up energy demand and prompting costly new investments in grid infrastructure—a single 30 MW data center uses more power than the City of Ashland. Without proper cost allocation, these expenses are increasingly being shouldered by everyday Oregonians.

The POWER Act (HB 3546) ensures that data centers and cryptocurrency operations pay their fair share for the significant demands they place on Oregon’s electric grid. The new law allows regulators to fairly assign infrastructure and energy costs, rather than passing those costs on to Oregon households and small businesses.

What the POWER Act Does
This new law requires state regulators to create new policies to help protect Oregon households from paying for the energy needs of data centers. It will also make for-profit utilities identify the costs that these large energy users are adding to the system—and make them pay their share. By creating a special category for these customers, regulators can protect Oregonians from covering the cost of these businesses.

Oregon Public Utility Commission: Protecting Households and Small Businesses

• Create a new customer class for data centers and cryptocurrency shops, starting at 20MW customers
• Protect families and small businesses from costs when bringing these new large energy users online, and from paying for the costs of these large energy users in the future
• Provide a report on other large energy users’ trends and growth in energy needs every two years

Data Centers: Ensuring Energy Investments Are Used and Paid For

• Sign contracts for at least 10 years to ensure expensive investments are worth it
• Pay for a minimum amount of energy in a period of time, even if they use less energy than expected
• Pay an extra fee if they use too much, ensuring excess costs don’t go to households

These measures are key to ensuring that data centers continue to cover the costs they create on our energy system and help utilities plan for a more stable, reliable grid.

Pacific Power is Not Providing a Plan for Data Centers

Pacific Power needs to plan for how it will address data centers in alignment with the POWER Act. Although there is a process to do just this, which has started at the Oregon Public Utility Commission, Pacific Power has not provided any substantial information.

When a utility begins a new proceeding at the Oregon Public Utility Commission, it is typically a long, complex document that advocates take weeks or months to dive into. PGE’s initial filing on its data center investigation was nearly 100 pages long with charts, graphs, and dense economic information. By contrast, Pacific Power’s initial filing on its data center investigation was just 15 pages. And the utility doesn’t seem to be making an effort to support its proposal to regulators.

Of the two main components of the POWER Act, new billing rates for data centers and long-term contracts, Pacific Power is choosing to focus only on contracts. But even the utility’s proposal for how to handle those contracts is lacking. Largely, the company has only restated the language of the law without proposing additional details for how it will comply.

This lack of information puts advocates, like CUB, in an unusual position. How can we weigh in on a plan with no details?

Oregonians Deserve Clear Protections from Data Center Costs

Pacific Power’s proposal (such as it is) does provide a little bit of information. It seems as if the utility does intend to hold data centers responsible for their own energy use through individual contracts. While this sounds good in theory, it is incredibly difficult to do in practice. Pacific Power has not provided any of the details of what this would look like, which is the whole point of this process.

The problem with individual contracts created from scratch for each new data center is that there is no baseline for protecting Oregonians.

If every time a new data center wants to become a Pacific Power customer, there is a new contract drawn up, how can we be sure that we are being protected? These contracts would be negotiated between big tech companies and Pacific Power, without regulators or advocates like CUB at the table. We need Pacific Power to provide more details on what will be covered in these contracts, what protections it is considering, and much, much more.

What is Pacific Power’s methodology for creating new data center contracts? What consumer protections will be included? How will data centers be held responsible for costs shared between all of Pacific Power’s customers?

Data Centers Are Not Box Standard, Neither Are Their Risks

Different sizes of data centers provide different costs and risks for Oregonians and utilities, too. But it’s not clear how Pacific Power intends to factor in differences in data centers when creating new individual contracts.

A small operation can have minimal impact and require very few upgrades to the grid before coming online. But a massive AI data center could use the same amount of electricity a year as some of Oregon’s largest cities and require hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure investments. And these massive operations’ contracts have massive risks if we get them wrong.

Data centers also have different approaches to dealing with their big demands for electricity. Some will rely entirely on the utility to provide electricity, adding a big strain on the system and potentially other customers, like our homes and businesses. But other data centers prefer to bring their own energy assets with them. A data center with battery storage or other energy efficiency tools can limit its impact on the energy grid. And a data center with contracts for energy generation, like with a solar farm, has different impacts on the utilities and surrounding communities.

How is Pacific Power planning to treat different types of data centers? How will energy efficiency and generation assets be considered in contracts? What additional protections will other customers see from the largest, riskiest data centers?

We Need Transparency and Regular Review

Right now, Pacific Power is proposing that advocates and regulators review all new data center contracts before they are enacted. But for all contracts, this review period is set at a standard 60 days. When the 60 days are up, the Commission would need to approve or reject the contract. Without knowing any additional details of the contract process, we cannot know if 60 days will be enough.

What Pacific Power is proposing is also not just for data centers that want to come online this year or next year. The one-off contract approach is how they want to continue dealing with new data centers indefinitely. This could create real problems with oversight down the line.

Can regulators and advocates expect standard contract language? How different will each contract be, requiring larger review periods? How can we regularly review this process to ensure it is working well?

Pacific Power Needs a Real Plan, Not Just an Outline

Without a real plan, CUB is left with more questions than answers. But with this lackluster proposal from Pacific Power, we cannot move forward in holding data centers accountable. We need Pacific Power to come to the table.

Legislators were clear: utilities need to create a plan for how to protect our homes and businesses from data centers’ energy costs.

Stay Up to Date on Oregon Utility Issues

CUB will continue to advocate for people in Oregon on major utility issues. Sign up for the CUB email list for the latest updates, action alerts, and news on policies that affect the utilities your home relies on.

Donate to CUB

To keep up with CUB, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and LinkedIn!

• Share this post on Facebook.
• Share this post on LinkedIn.
• Share this post with email.

« Back