I want to thank The Oregonian/OregonLive for reporting about the increases in our electricity and natural gas prices in recent articles over the last two weeks. I find it interesting that Portland General Electric could increase our rates in part to pay for the infrastructure for these power draining data centers operated by Amazon and Google, (“Oregon’s data centers want a lot more electricity. Who’s going to pay? It could be you,” Oct. 13).
PGE and its regulators do not have a process to charge for supplying new infrastructure for new data centers in Oregon. Instead, they are charging the ratepayers for it. NW Natural will be receiving a 4.5% increase from ratepayers this year. This is less than less than the utility requested, because state regulators would not let it include political lobbying and infrastructure costs in the ratepayer hike.