Oregon regulators approved a 29.7% electricity rate increase for data centers in Portland General Electric's territory, effective this week, according to Newser's coverage. The Oregon Public Utility Commission voted unanimously on the increase. Residential customers get a 1.3% rate cut in the same order. The steepest bill lands on the colocation cluster in Hillsboro: Flexential, Stack Infrastructure, QTS, NTT, and Digital Realty.
The increase runs through House Bill 3546, Oregon's 2025 POWER Act. The law forces large power users to fund the infrastructure their growth demands, instead of spreading that cost across every ratepayer. Bob Jenks, president of Oregon's Citizens' Utility Board, estimates non-data-center customers will save roughly $900 million over the next 30 years. He expects data center operators to challenge the rate in court.
Oregon created a distinct rate class, Schedule 96, for loads above 20 megawatts. It pins minimum demand charges to 90% of a facility's contracted capacity, whether that capacity gets used or not. Contract terms scale from 10 to 30 years by project size. Loads above 100 megawatts pay an added surcharge of a penny per kilowatt-hour, routed into energy assistance for low-income households.
PGE's data center draw grew sixfold in five years. It climbed from 50 average megawatts in early 2020 to more than 300 by mid-2025, demand equal to roughly 240,000 households. A rate class built around that growth curve does not distinguish a megawatt spent on GPUs from one spent on chillers. Every kilowatt a facility burns lifting its PUE above 1.2 now costs 29.7% more than it did last week. A Hillsboro hall running old CRAC units pays the same markup as one running warm-water loops.
Oregon joins a growing list of states rewriting who pays for data center growth. Virginia ratepayers have pushed back hard on similar cost shifts, and Illinois passed its own version aimed at making large loads cover their own grid math. Neither law mentions cooling by name. Each one hands operators the same lever: cut the megawatts wasted on inefficient thermal management, or keep paying the new premium on them.
Operators in Hillsboro now have a direct financial reason to chase the efficiency gains most data centers still leave on the table. A facility running PUE 1.5 instead of 1.2 pays that 29.7% markup on the wasted third of its power bill, every month, for as long as Schedule 96 stands. Retrofitting to direct-to-chip cooling or replacing an aging chiller plant stops being a sustainability slide and becomes a number finance can track against the new Oregon rate class, line by line.