Oregon PUC Order 26-154 Approves PGE Schedule 96: Data Centers Pay 29% More, Residential Rates Drop

The Oregon Public Utility Commission issued Order No. 26-154 on May 7, 2026, approving Portland General Electric’s Schedule 96 — the first tariff under Oregon’s POWER Act (HB 3546) requiring large data-center customers (over 20 MW) to pay rates roughly 29% higher than legacy tariffs, effective June 10, 2026. Data centers consuming 100MW+ face an additional 1-cent/kWh surcharge directed toward programs that offset residential and low-income energy costs, and must bear the full cost of any distribution-infrastructure upgrades their load requires. Utility Dive reports the order confirmed under docket UM 2377.

This is the most fully realized Channel B cost-shift reversal documented in the timeline so far — a regulatory design explicitly rerouting infrastructure costs from the general ratepayer to the large-load beneficiary, parallel to Pennsylvania’s PPL Electric large-load tariff (2026-03-13–ppl-electric-pa-puc-275m-rate-hike-large-load-data-center-tariff) and Texas’s Abbott-directed PUCT/ERCOT reform (2026-06-10–abbott-directive-puct-ercot-data-center-infrastructure-costs). Note: this May 7 approval predates a separate June 10 PUC action reported as delaying “the ruling” on the same docket to July (2026-06-10–oregon-puc-delays-pge-data-center-large-load-rate-ruling) — Resolved 2026-08-27 against the Commission’s own press release for docket UM 2377: the two entries describe different stages of one proceeding, not a source discrepancy. May 7 (Order 26-154) approved the Schedule 96 framework; June 10 delayed the rate ruling; and the Commission set the rates unanimously on July 7, 2026 (2026-07-07–oregon-puc-approves-pge-large-load-rate-class-29-percent-data-center-increase) — data centers +29.7 percent, with residential, commercial, and other industrial classes all seeing decreases.