In just the last four years, residential electricity costs in the Portland area of Oregon have increased by almost 50%. The cost of purchasing power from the open energy market has increased, which has been the main cause of those rises. However, there is growing concern that in the years to come, home power bills may rise sharply due to the fast growth of power-hungry data centers.
Data centers already account for over 10% of Oregon’s total electricity use. By the end of the decade, power planners predict that tech businesses’ power use would treble, if not triple.
According to industry insiders, the forecast’s high end is most plausible, which means that by 2030, data centers in the Northwest may use almost as much electricity as all of the households in Oregon and Washington do now.
On the Beat Check podcast, Mike Rogoway, a data center reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive, discussed a new proposal that state lawmakers are drafting for the upcoming legislative session that would allow Oregon regulators to shield residential customers from the costs of providing data centers.
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Legislators in Oregon draft a plan to protect customers from data center power costs.
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