The Oregon House of Representatives is considering a bill aimed at protecting households from costs associated with the construction of new transmission and generation assets to power the state's surging data center market.
House Bill 3546 would place data centers and cryptocurrency miners into a new class of utility customers.
According to reporting from The Oregonian, if passed the bill will provide energy regulators with the authority to ensure that homes and small businesses in the state will not shoulder the costs of data centers.
In addition, it would require new large-load data center customers to sign a ten-year contract to buy a minimum amount of power, ensuring that ratepayers aren’t saddled with the costs if the demand doesn't come to fruition.
“Without intervention, the cost created by the disproportionate demand of big energy users will be borne by residential consumers who are already struggling,” said Rep. Pam Marsh, one of the bill’s four sponsors. Marsh argued that data centers' impact on the grid is uncharacteristic of other large users, necessitating the new rules to shield other ratepayers.
The bill will only apply to data centers served by investor-owned utilities like Portland General Electric (PGE) and PacifiCorp, with other electric cooperatives that serve data centers in the state already holding the authority to shield residential customers.
Bob Jenks, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, said at a legislative hearing Thursday in Salem that the new rate class is necessary, as “data centers are a unique set of customers that are putting a unique and significant cost on the electric system.”
Therefore, the new energy generation needed to serve them must be funded by the data centers, Jenks said.
Large-scale hyperscalers have responded positively to the bill. “We’re here today because we really want to work with you on this bill and are here as collaborators,” Ellen Zuckerman, Google’s head of energy market development for the Americas, said at the hearing.
However, Zuckerman also contended that she wants the bill to apply to all new large-load users, not just the data center sector, warning that the bill sets up a “concerning” precedent by singling out data centers.
Oregon is one of the US’ premier data center markets, with Amazon, Meta, Google, and Apple all having a presence in the state.
According to Jenks, PGE supplied more than one million MWh of energy for data center customers in 2023, which was more than double the total recorded two years earlier. In total, data centers in Oregon consume 11 percent of the state's power.
According to PGE’s Q4 earnings, the Portland-based utility has formal applications representing 5.5GW of new potential data center load moving through its pipeline.
