QTS Data Centers in Hillsboro on Oct. 11, 2024. Despite data centers driving overall system demand growth for Portland General Electric, the company does not plan to directly assign new costs associated with meeting that demand to the data centers. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle).
Oregon’s largest electrical utility is proposing to make residential customers pay at least part of the long-term cost of supplying large data centers, despite a new law requiring it to charge the centers’ developers, not other customers.
This summer, Oregon became one of just a few states to pass a law requiring data centers to foot the costs of growing energy and transmission infrastructure that’s needed to power them…