Latest news with #QTSDataCenters
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bill to protect residential electricity customers from subsidizing data center demand moves forward
QTS Data Centers in Hillsboro on Oct. 11, 2024. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Oregon is close to ensuring data center owners pay what they owe for their growth following several years of painful residential electricity hikes driven in part by rising energy demand from the facilities. House Bill 3546, also called the POWER Act, passed the Senate on a party-line vote Tuesday and with bipartisan support in the House on Thursday. Five Republican representatives voted with Democrats to pass it, and Gov. Tina Kotek is expected to sign it. State Rep. Bobby Levy, R-Echo, was one of two Republicans excused from voting on bills Thursday. Levy's family business in 2021 sold farmland to Amazon for a data center and receives wastewater used for farm irrigation from another Amazon data center. But under Oregon law, she would have had to vote on the bill if she had been on the House floor. The POWER Act would clear the way for the Oregon Public Utility Commission to ensure charges for grid expansion and infrastructure needed to power data centers are not passed onto residential and commercial customers by creating a separate customer class for data centers. Those centers are the fastest-growing energy users in the state. The state's Public Utility Commission, a three-person governor-appointed group, is charged with regulating the rates of privately owned electric and gas utilities in Oregon. Shannon Kellogg, a lobbyist and vice president for Amazon, said on LinkedIn that company officials asked Oregon lawmakers more than a month ago to pause consideration on the bill so they could allow more time for 'a more comprehensive solution that advances shared goals without unintended consequences, or consider additional amendments.' The bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, noted in a news release following the vote that a single 30 megawatt data center uses as much energy in one year as the entire city of Ashland, and can be built in less than two years. 'The POWER Act focuses on a subset of energy users that have a massive impact on the electrical grid,' she said. 'That demand is unique and requires a distinct solution.' The bill also applies to Bitcoin mining facilities, but exempts a number of other heavy energy users, such as semiconductor manufacturers, and applies only to new contracts data centers and Bitcoin facilities make with electric utilities. That means only newly built ones, or existing ones that require more energy and infrastructure down the road, will fall into the new rate class. Charlotte Shuff, a spokesperson for the watchdog Citizens' Utilities Board, said other states and Oregon are seeing demand grow for companies that want to build processing centers for Artificial Intelligence. Those are more like 250 megawatt data centers, which would consume in one year the same amount of energy as the entire city of Eugene. Oregon's data center market is the fifth largest in the nation, according to Chicago-based commercial real estate group Cushman & Wakefield. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and X, formerly named Twitter, have massive data centers in eastern Oregon as well as in The Dalles, Hillsboro and Prineville that require enormous amounts of energy to operate. Amazon data centers in eastern Oregon have caused 554% load growth at the Umatilla Electric Cooperative in just the last ten years, according to a Sightline Institute analysis of US Energy Information Administration data. Between 2013 and 2023, Oregon's overall electricity consumption rose by more than 20%, the analysis found. 'Data centers undoubtedly drove a major share, if not almost all, of this growth,' analysts wrote. Four Electric utilities — including the two biggest utilities in Oregon: Pacific Power and Portland General Electric, or PGE — absorbed 75% of that load growth from the data centers. Hundreds of thousands of residential customers of Oregon's three private, investor-owned electric utilities have struggled to keep up with double digit rate hikes since 2020. The state's Public Utility Commission approved a 5.5% increase in December for residential customers of PGE and a nearly 10% increase in residential electricity rates for Pacific Power customers. Overall rates for residential customers of both utilities — which collectively serve more than 1.4 million customers in Oregon — are now up about 50% since 2020, with the Public Utility Commission approving increases nearly every year for the past five years. Residential rate increases have risen more than twice the rate of inflation during that period. A record 64,000 Oregonians had their power shutoff for nonpayment at some point in 2024, according to the Citizens' Utilities Board. Johnny Earl, president of SEIU Local 503, a statewide union representing about 72,000 caregivers and other professionals, said in a news release that the bill is about fairness. 'Working families, low-income households, and small businesses — already stretched thin in a worsening economy — cannot subsidize the massive energy demands of corporate tech giants,' he wrote. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Electricity demand in Northwest could double in next 20 years, forecast finds
QTS Data Centers in Hillsboro on Oct. 11, 2024. Data centers are driving near-term energy demand in the region, according to a new regional power forecast from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Demand for electricity in the Northwest could double by 2046, according to a new energy forecast from regional experts. Over the next two decades, demand could increase by between 1.8% and 3.1% annually, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council heard Tuesday. The projected growth will come primarily from companies building more data centers in the region, more electric vehicles on roads, electrifying buildings, computer chip manufacturing and the production of 'green hydrogen' created by running an electrical current through water to split the molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Pacific NW wins $1 billion from feds for 'Clean Hydrogen Hub.' Now what? Council staff presented the 20-year forecast for electricity demand in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and western Montana Tuesday to the council's eight, governor-appointed members. Each state's governor gets to appoint two representatives. 'The data centers, naturally in our forecasts, are the very early load growth driver here. They're the big driver of near term demand,' Steven Simmons, senior energy forecasting analyst, told the council. Energy demand from data centers and from all electric vehicles in the region are expected to be equal by 2046, and demand from EVs is likely to surpass data center demand after 2046, Simmons said. Residential and commercial demand, which includes forecasted energy demand for electric vehicle charging at homes and buildings, but does not include data centers, is expected to grow more gradually. Demand for residential and commercial energy in Washington alone will equal the combined demand from those sectors in Oregon, Idaho and Montana during the next two decades. The energy forecast, part of the council's forthcoming 9th Northwest Regional Power Plan to manage demand, does not yet include some possible variables that could reduce future demand, such as improved energy efficiency in cars, buildings and some industries as a response to demand, as well as growing adoption of rooftop solar on residential and commercial buildings. But rapidly growing demand now means electricity grids in the Northwest and across the U.S. are encountering transmission constraints, and scaling infrastructure to meet demand has been slow due to supply chain delays and issues, staff said. Council staff expect the biggest growth in data center and computer chip energy demand will occur in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and the Portland and Boise metro areas, based on historical trends and announced projects. There are more than 100 data centers in Oregon, according to the company Data Center Map, and there are more than 5,000 data centers throughout the U.S. according to Statista — the most in any country. Oregon's data center market is the fifth largest in the nation, according to Chicago-based commercial real estate group Cushman & Wakefield. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and X, formerly named Twitter, have massive data centers in eastern Oregon as well as in The Dalles, Hillsboro and Prineville. To develop its next power plan, the council will evaluate supply side resources, including the potential for more regional windfarms, utility-scale and small-scale solar installations, better battery storage and more geothermal and fracked gas sources, among other options. The council has published regional power plans about every five years since 1983, to lay out how the region will maintain an affordable and adequate power supply. A draft of the plan, an update from the last one that was published in 2021, is expected to be ready for public review and input by July 2026 and would be finalized by late 2026, according to council spokesperson Peter Jensen. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council was formed in 1981 following passage of the federal Northwest Power Act. That act directed the four states to work collaboratively on regional energy planning and to stop the decline of native Columbia Basin fish species that have suffered massive population losses over the last century, primarily from the development of hydroelectric dams in the region. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in February appointed two new Oregon representatives to the council: Margaret Hoffmann, of Bend, and Chuck Sams, of Pendleton. Hoffman is the former Oregon director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development program and energy adviser to former Oregon Govs. John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown. Sams, former executive director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, was most recently director of the National Park Service. Sams briefly served on the council in 2021 before he was appointed to run the Park Service. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
