Oregon Could Face Huge Demands on its Power Supply Grid by High-Tech Companies
Oregon will need much more electricity, and soon, to feed increasingly power-hungry high-tech companies.
State Consumption Could Quadruple
Data consumption could quadruple in the Northwest by the end of the decade, while artificial intelligence requires ever increasing amounts of energy to perform sophisticated tasks.
Data centers all have one thing in common – enormous electrical substations and towering power lines are required to provide their energy needs.
See also: Oregon is a Major Data Center Location Straining the Energy Grid
Today’s Landscape is Already Marred by Huge Concrete Structures
Today’s landscape already paints a picture – Google blows billowing steam from its waterfront location on the Columbia River in The Dalles, Meta stores Instagram and Facebook posts in desert digital warehouses above Prineville, Amazon is housed in bulky concrete structures in fields near Boardman, and social media company X, LinkedIn, and Oracle have large data centers next to suburban cul-de-sacs and farmhouses in Hillsboro.
Industry estimates that data centers already consume 11% of Oregon’s power needs.
See also: Amazon’s Oregon Data Centers Set To Purchase Clean Power
Someone Must Foot the Bill
But as digital consumption increases and tech companies expand, someone must foot the bill. Oregonians are already hard-pressed to meet soaring energy bills, and another price hike is on the cards for 2025.
There is also growing concern that residents will have to contribute to the cost of more power plants and transmission lines.
Some lawmakers and regulators believe households must be protected from the cost of providing energy to the state’s growing number of data centers but how this can be achieved is unclear.
The acting director of the Oregon Public Utility Commission, Nolan Moser, says the state’s regulatory structures were not designed to handle the current scale of large consumer growth. He said the commission would have to cope with the growing demand for data by reexamining its approach to a changing world.
Oregon is ranked fifth nationally as an energy supplier to data centers and, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, data centers will consume double by 2030 – that equates to almost one-quarter of Oregon’s total power supply.
The reason for the state’s popularity as a computer technology site is the cost of power compared to other states is relatively inexpensive.
Tech Companies Received $227 Million in Tax Exemptions in 2023
But its biggest drawcard is the tax breaks that Oregon structured to attract high-tech companies to the region.
Last year, tech companies received $227 million in property tax exemptions. The industry is likely to save billions of dollars in future years by capitalizing on state-enterprise zone incentive programs that were designed for small manufacturers in the 1980s.
The other real threat facing the state, according to forecasters, is that rapid expansion of data consumption could exceed what Oregon can provide.
That would require the purchase of power on the open market which will inevitably raise consumer costs and pose a power crisis threat.
In the meantime, Oregonians must prepare themselves for more power plants, more wind turbines, more solar farms, and more natural gas plants converted from coal to mushroom throughout the state.
They must also prepare themselves for power lines crisscrossing the eastern Oregon plains, the Cascade Mountains, and up through Forest Park, all at a cost of billions of dollars.