Oregonians should soon see less frequent gas and electric rate hikes and smaller rate increases over a period of time from some of Oregon’s largest for-profit utilities.

That’s after Oregon legislators passed the Fairness & Affordability in Residential Energy Act, or FAIR Energy Act, on Tuesday.

House Bill 3179 mandates more transparency from utilities — requiring them to produce annual reports indicating upcoming rate increases, what rate increases will be for and analyzing the impact of increases on their customers.

The bill also changes when newly approved rate hikes take place.

Until now, gas rate hikes have usually taken effect on Nov. 1, while approved electric rates take effect on Jan. 1. But energy affordability advocates and environmental justice groups have long called for rate hikes to be implemented when residents are using less energy to heat their homes, after the winter months.

Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board policy and program director Jennifer Hill-Hart said last year nearly 70,000 households were behind on their bills and disconnected by for-profit utilities. The utility watchdog group found that rate hikes taking place during the winter were directly related to the disconnections.

“People just can’t pay it,” she said. “It’s just the worst time of year for people to have additional expenses for these essential services.”

Now, utilities will no longer be able to implement new rates between Nov. 1 and March 31.

Hill-Hart said the winter months hit households the hardest because they are when gas and electric bills are the highest.

“Prohibiting winter rate increases is really going to help Oregonians get through that expensive utility season,” she said.

The FAIR Act is part of the larger package of bills, known as the Energy Affordability and Resilience legislative package, which is aimed at energy affordability and creating more transparency from utilities.

Utility rate increases have been on the rise for the past five years, with some utilities charging 50% more than what customers were paying in 2020. This year, NW Natural is requesting a 7% increase.

“Oregonians are struggling with unpredictable, poorly explained utility rate hikes that strain family budgets,” Oregon State Senator Janeen Sollman, D-Washington County, said in a statement. “House Bill 3179, the FAIR Energy Act, fixes this by requiring real-world impact assessments before rate increases, banning winter hikes, and ensuring clearer billing — delivering the affordability, fairness, and transparency our constituents need."

House Bill 3179 will also limit how often a utility can raise residential customer rates. Starting in 2027, utility rate increase requests will occur every three years.

“We’ve had back-to-back-to-back rate increases over the last couple of years, and so what this bill will do is spread out utility rate increase requests every three years by 2027,” she said.

“The intention is that at least the three big utilities will not come in the same year for a rate increase request,” she continued, referring to Pacific Power, Portland General Electric and Northwest Natural.

The Alliance of Western Energy Consumers opposed the bill earlier this year, saying the bill doesn’t protect industrial and commercial rate payers and could lead to those ratepayers seeing significant increases in energy costs.

“This bill poses a significant risk for shifting unrecovered costs from residential customers to all other customer classes,” Executive Director Bill Gaines said in public testimony. “If residential customers have limits on the timing and the amount of their rate increases, it creates a situation where the difference in what a utility is authorized to recover from those customers will need to be collected or recovered from everyone else.”

Other groups like Northwest Gas Association also opposed the bill, saying spreading out costs could lead to higher rate increases.

House Bill 3179 now heads to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for her signature.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/25/oregon-electricity-power-utilities-gas-electric-price-rates-fairness-affordability-energy-house-bill-3179/