Portland General Electric’s large energy users like data centers will see substantial rate hikes starting Wednesday.

The Oregon Public Utility Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved PGE’s 29.7% rate increase for data centers, cryptocurrency companies and large industrial energy users.

This is the first time the Public Utility Commission has significantly increased energy rates for these customers under the state’s POWER Act. That law, passed in 2025, creates a new rate class for these large energy users, requiring them to pay for their share of electricity usage. It kicks in for projects that use more than 20 megawatts of power. That’s the equivalent of what a large paper mill might use in energy.

“These changes ensure that costs created by data centers in PGE’s territory are more accurately reflected in their rates,” Commission 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 is the first utility to raise data center rates under the law.

The company’s residential customers will see a 1.3% decrease on their energy bills. That equates to about $1.91 less a month for a typical residential energy customer.

Gov. Tina Kotek applauded the utility commission’s decision and called it a win for Oregonians.

“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,” she said in a statement. “We must continue to do whatever we can to keep working families and small businesses from absorbing the costs of data center energy use.”

Last week, Kotek held a press conference reiterating the importance of the POWER Act. She also said she’s looking forward to recommendations from her Data Center Advisory Committee and working with lawmakers in the next legislative session, which starts in January 2027.

The new rates will impact 963,000 customers starting Wednesday.

Shifting costs to data centers

Data centers use up an enormous amount of energy to power their facilities, whether for cloud storage or for AI. That enormous energy demand pushes up the cost of providing electricity to all customers and contributes to higher rates.

Oregon’s POWER Act ensures that these large energy users are paying their share, while ensuring residential and business customers aren’t footing their costs.

But putting the new rates into effect hit a few bumps.

PGE had hoped its rates would take effect on June 10, but Public Utility Commission staff requested more time to read over the company’s proposal. For a month, PGE and PUC staff worked together to correct the proposal with “technical clarifications” that resulted in a minor increase to data center rates that have now been approved, PGE’s Ben Morris said.

“With the commission’s vote, PGE will become the first utility to implement Oregon’s POWER Act, delivering on our commitment to support economic growth while ensuring the customers driving growth on the system pay their share,” Morris said in an emailed statement.

The changes approved Tuesday also update terms of service for these large energy users, create a new charge to fund energy assistance programs and update rules on how new large users connect to PGE’s system.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/07/07/oregon-data-center-general-electric-rate-hikes/