SALEM, OR – Oregon’s second largest investor-owned electric utility could soon directly assign the costs of new energy projects and infrastructure needed for data centers to data center operators.
Pacific Power last week agreed to the deal following months of negotiations with staff of the Oregon Public Utility Commission, the watchdog Citizens’ Utility Board and a handful of environmental and community advocacy groups.
The Citizens’ Utility Board in a news release Tuesday called the agreement “the strongest from a for-profit electric utility yet” under Oregon’s new POWER Act, which mandates the state’s monopoly electric utilities create a separate rate class for data centers to ensure other customers aren’t subsidizing the massive energy demand from the server farms…