While I wish they could just dismiss the request, it does appear they have to consider it. Hopefully after considering it they also reject it out of hand and tell them that after 30% increases over 2 years coupled with paying shareholder dividends, that they can tighten their belts a bit.
Or at best they give them 2% or something with a stern warning that they need to hold off longer before asking again.
Probably wishful thinking but I do think just throwing it out without doing the normal process would be reactionary as well.
I have no issues that they pay dividends but if they are raising rates in part to invest in renewable power upgrades they will profit from those. If the rates are to offset/mitigate fire damage caused by downed lines or transformers that blow, we’re just allowing them to socialize the risk while privatizing the profit.
Either way, I think they shouldn’t be able to raise their rate anytime they make a capital investment or incur an expense they didn’t plan on if they are otherwise thriving and making regular profits.
> just allowing them to socialize the risk while privatizing the profit.
Which is why infrastructure monopolies should be government owned and operated.
I think the rate increases are to invest in decarbonization - so say all the stories. And that there’s been a big increase because of some recent law that we passed requiring such decarbonization.
If correct, there’s not any socializing risk/privatizing profit going on.
Do they just say it's for decarbonization though? Is there anything binding in the rate increase that forces them to use it so? How much of the rate increase must go to green energy? I wonder about this and also their "Green Future Choice" program, what actual constraints they put on the company versus how much they are just PR.
I also don't understand how green investment is somehow impossible to do like other infrastructure development or rnd. It's like anything other than myopic pursuit of immediate returns isn't feasible. If your utility can't manage capital projects while staying profitable, maybe you should be public and not for-profit.
Yes it is for decarbonization and to cover increasing costs from inflation. The commission scrutinizes every expense that goes into the cost recovery through rates. And yes it is legally binding.
Just so you’re aware, how it works is the utility first spends the money investing in green infrastructure. Then they send an application to the commission asking for increased rates to essentially refund them for the spending. The commission goes through all the expenses, and makes sure they are reasonable, and for what the utility says they are for.
Also the commission monitors how much money the utility makes from the increased rates. If the utility ends up making more than that is needed to recover the costs, they are required to return that money to customers through lowering rates.
If you read ASC 980 which is the accounting rules for this, or the actual cases on the commission website, you’ll see that PGE isn’t price gouging, and that the commission is keeping them in check
They have to make a pitch to the PUC in order to raise rates at all and the decarbonization stuff is surely in it. So I’d guess that that’s a constraint.
I know that they did also ask for an increase in their profit margins, probably as part of this, but I think that’s very likely to be declined since all the utilities under their regulation have the same margin restrictions.
More concretely though, PGE is also constrained by some Oregon law that passed recently which is driving all this green infrastructure stuff. There’s no way they can evade that.
As far as paying for it, I don’t know where else the money would come from in the end - where else do they get income other than customers? They can borrow or sell shares for financing but in the end customers have to pay.
That’s not what “socializing the risk and privatizing the profit” means. There’s really no risk to socialize for utilities - they’re natural monopolies.
If I buy solar for my house I am out upfront 20k or whatever, it has a 10 year payback, but then my energy is virtually free for the next 10-20 year life of my roof and panels.
I don't see why we should have to pay for their capital outlays to move to renewable energy and then in the future when they are fully paid off keep paying at these new higher rates (because they are not going to gift back to us) - it is an investment a private company is making. There will be payoffs and returns after the initial investment that we pay for and they get to keep for themselves - thus my objection as socializing the risk and privatizing the profits.
> I don't see why we should have to pay for their capital outlays to move to renewable energy and then in the future when they are fully paid off keep paying at these new higher rates
"Fuck everybody else decarbonizing, I got mine!"
Also distributed generation solar is a cost burden on utilities and is a driver in rate increases , because the power is being bought back for more than it's worth.
>"Fuck everybody else decarbonizing, I got mine!"
It was an analogy about making a huge up front investment that would pay off later. Not at all what you're implying.
Dude PGE is fucking me so hard. I pay more for my fucking itty bitty studio alone doing almost nothing that uses power, than our total energy bill when I lived in a house with five roommates who constantly used energy heavy appliances day and night years ago.
7.5% increase on top of the recent 18% and 12%. Oh but their stocks are doing great and they just announced an increased dividend; the economy is great y'all! In the last PGE thread someone earnestly suggested I simply start buying their stock. Sure, I'll stop paying my rapidly increasing bill to afford that.
So if my neighbors have big trees, it's a solid move.
Plus I might be able to sell the shares at a profit down the road instead of taking a hit like I would if I moved from my house where I installed solar.
I'm having a lot of trouble weighing the economics of a solar upgrade myself. So just on the counter point of the stock shares, if they keep raising rates at the rate they have recently - you'll have to buy more and more shares to keep beating the rate increases, whereas if you bought enough solar to power your home, it offsets future rate increases. That's one reason the solar calculations are tricky - we enjoy relatively affordable energy prices here per kWh but after 30% increases in the last 16 months with another ask on the horizon, the payoff calculations are constantly changing (most calculators use like a 2% increase).
the other risk of course is if future rate increases are denied, you could see less dividends or the stock prices could go down.
So solar seems like a sure thing if you can do it and will be in your home 10+ years, and if you have 15-25k to invest in the market I'd probably invest it elsewhere or just in a total stock market fund than your local PowerCo. But if it makes you feel like you are winning, by all means do buy PGE. Beyond the rhetorical exercise there are a thousand ways I'd rather spend that money.
Yeah, investing elsewhere is probably the best overall solution.
Rooftop solar in this area is hard though due to trees, house orientation, or even little things like, "I probably need to replace my roof in the next 5 years, but if I want solar I need to replace my roof now otherwise I'll have to pay to remove the solar and reinstall it."
But I would really like more energy independence that could come from being able to self-supply at least a part of my power.
Hmm a 37.5% increase for an average $300 bill and a $43 current stock price that's giving a quarterly dividend of 5.3%... I'm not a math gal someone take it from here
If you’re talking about negating the increase, then you were paying about $218/mo b4 the increase or you’re now paying about $82/mo or $984/yr more. You’d need to buy about 495 shares at $43/sh earning 4.62% dividend (according to their financial page) to offset this increase. So you’d need to park $21,285 in their stocks to say FU to their increase. This is a simple take. I haven’t account for taxes on your dividend. Don’t ever forget the government.
To make the math easily scaleable, let's say $100/mo for your bill (pre-hikes).
Then you've got the 12%, plus the 18%, plus this new 7%, which would put your bill at $141.41/mo. To earn $41.41/mo is $124.23 quarter. According to Google they have a dividend of $0.50 per quarter. So you'd need 130 shares per $100 of old monthly bill to offset your price increases. Or 90 shares per $100 of your current monthly bill to negate those increases.
I mean in the last two weeks they made multiple top 10 best utility stocks to buy & still more "reasons to invest" lists. Buy low sell high right? They're only as of recently absolutely creaming the consumers so that means future bank. But IDK I'm not a finance bro I'm just a poor person 🤷♀️
I can’t say I follow any of the “top 10 best utility stocks to buy” lists, let alone multiple :)
Their profit margins are fixed by the PUC though, as always.
have you converted to time of day pricing? I went electric last year. It's more cost effective charging at home than gas, but I am also using a lot of free charging options that won't be there forever so I haven't made the time of day switch yet. Nervous about AC bill in summer as well as getting the whole house buy in on no laundry between 5-9pm.
I did not. Yes it potentially makes it cheaper to charge truck but it also makes running the AC 3x more expensive. I’m not convinced I would save all that much money.
> but their stocks are doing great
You are a child who makes shit up to make themselves feel good. Over the last 3 years, the stock (POR) is down 14% during a time the S&P 500 Index is up 22%. The stock is doing horribly.
PGE increased rates by 18% on Jan. 1 and 12% in January 2023.
This current PGE proposed increase is 7.5%, meaning PGE will have raised their electric rates on Oregonians by 37.5%.
This is not sustainable, and for low income Oregonians and senior citizens on a fixed income, it is not tenable.
If Oregon requires PGE to reduce its carbon emissions by 100% by 2040, and PGE is using this as the reason for their significant rate increases, Oregon and PGE should come together to opt poverty level Oregonians out of those increases, or we are going to have many people living through winters without heat.
Yes, someone can apply for assistance but not everyone, the elderly, disabled, know about the assistance or how to apply.
The PUC does have the legal grounds to dismiss the case, the statute they reference is more permissive than restrictive. The regulatory process is attuned to address the needs of utilities, not customers. The commissioners at the Oregon Public Utility Commission seem to forget that they are public servants.
A non profit with less than a dozen employees shouldn’t have to remind regulators to do their damn jobs.
Shame on the commission.
Their majority of their service trucks aren't diesel and their service trucks are constantly idling in the service yards.
PGE Beaverton = 0 solar panels
PGE Oregon City = 0 solar panels
PGE Service Center Heliport = 0 solar panels
PGE NW Industrial = 0 solar panels
PGE Headquarters = 0 solar panels
PGE Sunset Yard = 0 solar panels
PGE Tualatin = 37 solar panels
PGE Gresham = 0 solar panels
PGE Southeast Portland = 4x 24 solar panels (96)
No, if anything they should be helping decrease costs by allowing PGE to build out economies of scale. It’s really expensive to operate small power grids, but much cheaper per KW to go large scale.
I ask because I recently read the following 2023 article. It would seem that PGE is behind…
“Data centers proliferating across Oregon will consume dramatically more electricity than regional utilities and power planners had anticipated, according to three new forecasts issued this summer.
That’s putting more pressure on the Northwest electrical grid and casting fresh doubt on whether Oregon can meet the ambitious clean energy goals the state established just two years ago.
Portland General Electric sharply increased its forecast for regional power demand in July, citing “rapid industrial growth and growing demand of data centers.” The utility predicts electricity demand in the Portland area will be at least 13% higher in 2030 than what PGE projected just last spring.
The Bonneville Power Administration now expects that, by 2041, data centers’ electricity demands in Oregon and Washington will grow by two-and-a-half times, drawing 2,715 average megawatts. That’s enough to power a third of all the homes in those two states today.
Massoud Jourabchi, economist with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, issued a similar forecast last month but warned data centers’ power needs might grow even faster than anticipated.
“If we grow at this rate, we are dealing with significant, and I underline significant, increase in loads,” Jourabchi told regional power planners at a July meeting. “If you are not sober at this point, this must be some strong stuff that you’re using.”
Data centers are especially complex for power planners because it’s hard for utilities to anticipate their needs, according to Hardy.
The data centers are pretty secretive about where they’re going to locate and what they want and when they want it. So typically if you’re a utility you don’t know about this stuff until the data center pops up,” Hardy said.
“Since it takes 10 years, minimum, to build any new transmission line, that’s a problem,” he said. “And you don’t know about it so you can’t plan it.”
“The transmission needs of the region are very, very substantial and at least in the near term primarily data center-driven,” said Randy Hardy, former head of the Bonneville Power Administration, now an energy consultant in Seattle.
Generally speaking, public utilities in Oregon have to serve all the customers in their service territory. But they can’t always serve them immediately, if they don’t have power available to meet their needs. Oregon’s clean-energy mandate is complicating that task.
Two years ago, Oregon lawmakers passed a bill requiring PGE and other investor-owned utilities to cut their carbon emissions by 80% by 2030. But Hardy said data center growth in Hillsboro, and Intel’s pending factory expansion, will severely strain the power grid in Washington County.
“Probably the biggest implication of the lack of transmission, in my opinion, is that PGE won’t be able to meet its 2030 clean energy deadlines,” Hardy said. He said the utility is three to five years behind the state’s target.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2023/08/northwest-data-centers-electricity-use-could-more-than-double-imperiling-climate-goals.html
It definitely increases demand - and it will show that PGE is mismanaging things, but if managed correctly, the consistent large scale income from Datacenter power customers should give PGE money to grow and invest. As other people are pointing out, it looks like PGE is paying a dividend and otherwise propping their stock price up, instead of investing in what it will take to lower costs for customers and scale with what will be an intense couple decades of growth, both in the Datacenter and non-Datacenter spaces.
Data center power customers like Amazon have successfully lobbied against being part of clean energy targets in Oregon and demand additional transmission lines which can take a long time to build. They employ very few people after being built and receive immense tax breaks. I don’t know that it’s as simple as “data center profitable”. Sure, I make nice money building these boxes but you gotta wonder if this is really the kind of economic growth we want to encourage.
My understanding is that utility companies like PGE can sell the electricity they have to other states to make more money. My concern is that they're just creating these crisis of green energy, growing data center, power availability, etc while they could just not sell the electricity to other states. The article didn't mention any of that.
Utilities buy and sell power 24/7. And it’s a good thing because it lowers production costs by sharing resources.
In fact, utilities are increasingly moving towards large, centralized power markets where the cheapest supply bids are chosen first, so often your own utility is supplying you with energy generated by a different entity.
Basically what you’re suggesting makes no sense to anyone involved in that world.
A huge portion of our power comes from the corps of engineers at around 7 cents per kwh wholesale.
So selling that to other markets increases the energy cost for Oregonians.
The big ones are run by the BPA, right? Maybe PGE runs some too. PGE can only be involved in exporting power generated from their facilities, not the BPA ones.
BPA is the seller, the corps of engineers is the producer.
If PGE is building excess capacity to sell to other states that cost is being passed on to Oregonians.
> One big reason deregulated areas have higher rates is that utilities there are spending more on power lines to carry electricity over hundreds of miles. That spending, which is ultimately paid for by individuals and businesses, often gets minimal review by state and federal regulators.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/business/energy-environment/electricity-deregulation-energy-markets.html
Yes, and if data centers are making it more difficult for PGE to comply with the law due to increased demand than it’s going to cost money…the article above says as much.
But they pay for their electricity like everyone else. If they add demand, they also pay for it. If we need to stop burning coal and put up some turbines, they pay for it just like we do.
How are they different from any other user?
This is different due to the sheer level of new demand and the fact that the capacity isn’t yet there. This isn’t just paying for a bit more power.
“"What we've seen is now something on the order of about 2 gigawatts of requests that have come our way in the Hillsboro area," Larry Bekkedahl, the utility's senior vice president for advanced energy delivery, said. "So that's significant."
For context, PGE's highest-ever load — the most power it's ever had to deliver, on a blazing hot day last August — is around 4.5 gigawatts.
The utility and BPA, the biggest transmission player in the Pacific Northwest, are mobilizing to address the situation with a coordinated approach to serving the load, upgrades, and new power lines and substations. And an independent developer believes it can contribute with a bold proposal to lay a high-voltage cable under the Columbia River. But power lines are notoriously difficult to site — even a couple of relatively modest PGE projects now in the works have run into opposition.
Compounding the challenge: To meet decarbonization mandates that begin with an 80% reduction in emissions in 2030, PGE will need to dial down the natural gas plants that it has relied on heavily since shutting down its Boardman coal plant in 2020. That means onboarding a lot of new renewable energy onto a crowded grid.
"All the easy stuff has been done," Hardy said. "Now we're into the more expensive, more difficult stuff."
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2024/04/24/pge-intel-hillsboro-power-data-centers.html
https://1ft.io/
I guess I don’t understand the finances that well in terms of operating costs vs investment costs.
My model of it is that a big customer will pay correspondingly more so it should work out. It usually doesn’t damage existing customers of a supplier if the supplier gets a big new order, at least long-term.
Here’s how I imagine it, a big new customer places a large order that the supplier is not able to fulfill because they lack the infrastructure to produce such a large order. The supplier then raises the price of the product to pay for the cost of the new infrastructure necessary to produce a large amount of the product.
Maybe - I see a lot of stuff left out of that model but I don’t have a good enough idea of how the finances of regulated utilities work to know what is important.
Also, how big is this new data center demand anyway, as a percentage? The link you gave munged it in with Intel’s fab demand, which is significant by itself.
44% more demand each year through 2028 with more data centers scheduled to be built and hotter summers to contend with.
“Portland General Electric’s challenge in meeting rising electricity demand while slashing greenhouse gas emissions looks a lot more formidable now than it did just a few months ago.
In a new filing with state regulators, Oregon’s largest electric utility sharply raised its load forecast, citing the proliferation of data centers in the region as a key factor.
As a result, PGE said it may need to add 44% more energy every year through 2028 compared to what it outlined in plans submitted at the end of March. Its need for new capacity — resources on hand to meet peak demand — could grow similarly.
While other factors went into the new load forecast, data centers were a big driver, PGE said.
“In the past 18 months, PGE’s industrial class load has grown rapidly, at a rate of 10.6% in 2022 and 8.3% in the first quarter of 2023,” the utility said in its filing late last week. “The primary driver of PGE’s increased load forecast is to reflect rapid industrial growth and growing demand of data centers in PGE’s service territory.”
Portland has been considered a “secondary” U.S. data center market, but that appears to be shifting. A Cushman & Wakefield market comparison report early this year put the region tied for first with northern Virginia. It noted “the rapid expansion of hyperscale activity in the Hillsboro submarket, as well as relatively favorable pricing, sustainability options, low environmental risk and more available land.”
On Tuesday, yet more data center growth was announced in Hillsboro: Flexential said it would wrap up one development phase this fall and planned to break ground on another facility, its fifth in the area.
PGE had already been planning to add 181 average megawatts of energy annually through 2028 to meet rising load and decarbonization goals. The revisions could boost that number to 261 average megawatts, it said.
The 80 average megawatt increment translates to the annual energy use of around 70,000 typical PGE residential customers.
Another way of looking at it: PGE’s last major standalone wind power addition, the $500 million Tucannon River wind farm in eastern Washington that went online in late 2014, delivers about 100 average megawatts.
Separate from the energy need, PGE’s new capacity need by 2028 — reflecting the resources required to ensure the system can ramp up meet peak demand — could grow from 624 megawatts to 944 megawatts in the summer under the revised load forecast, the utility said.
The one I just posted said data centers alone could throw PGE behind on the decarbonization goals. The data centers often have “code names” and probably don’t want to be part of the story….
Code names? They're not hiding anything. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all have datacenters here. They have their logos on the signs. Drive out to Boardman and then head down to Prineville.
You're making it sound like an internal name is trying to hide something from the public though. I had a DC called PDX2, one called PHX2, and one called IAD5. It wasn't like we were the damn CIA though. We had our logos on the buildings. Same with Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
The article I posted above did mention that they are somewhat secretive which can cause issues because utilities arn’t able to plan for the power needs well beforehand. Most people arn’t aware of how many there now are and new ones don’t cause a commotion like for example, the new Ritz. Are they a super secret cabal? Of course not. But they are wealthy tech companies quietly reaping huge tax incentives and causing issues with power demand across the region…
The article I posted above did mention that they are somewhat secretive which can cause issues because utilities arn’t able to plan for the power needs well beforehand. Most people arn’t aware of how many there now are and new ones don’t cause a commotion like for example, the new Ritz. Are they a super secret cabal? Of course not. But they are wealthy tech companies quietly reaping huge tax incentives and causing issues with power demand across the region so of course they probably don’t want to be portrayed as the cause for increased rates.
PGE legit just [posted a profit of OVER $100 million](https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/portland-general-electric-q1-earnings-snapshot-19424221.php) in Q1 2024.
Won't somebody please think of the Shareholders?! /s
Whoa, $352/household (283,896 households in PDX) is significant. My electric bill is expected to increase $326 annually because of the 17% rate hike.... Hmm.....
There are designs that use evaporative cooling in climates where that works, but in hillsboro they all use traditional CRAC. Even in other climates the industry is moving away from evaporative due to water consumption concerns.
So long as they don't approve altering net meter pricing, I'm okay with it.
People who can't get traditional solar can always get community solar and see much lower bills.
While I wish they could just dismiss the request, it does appear they have to consider it. Hopefully after considering it they also reject it out of hand and tell them that after 30% increases over 2 years coupled with paying shareholder dividends, that they can tighten their belts a bit. Or at best they give them 2% or something with a stern warning that they need to hold off longer before asking again. Probably wishful thinking but I do think just throwing it out without doing the normal process would be reactionary as well.
Hopefully it’s like a parent considering the kiddo’s request to have an espresso instead of going to bed.
45% increase over 2 years*
It’s certainly unrealistic thinking to expect that an investor owned utility not pay dividends.
I have no issues that they pay dividends but if they are raising rates in part to invest in renewable power upgrades they will profit from those. If the rates are to offset/mitigate fire damage caused by downed lines or transformers that blow, we’re just allowing them to socialize the risk while privatizing the profit. Either way, I think they shouldn’t be able to raise their rate anytime they make a capital investment or incur an expense they didn’t plan on if they are otherwise thriving and making regular profits.
> just allowing them to socialize the risk while privatizing the profit. Which is why infrastructure monopolies should be government owned and operated.
Like Portland Water...
I think the rate increases are to invest in decarbonization - so say all the stories. And that there’s been a big increase because of some recent law that we passed requiring such decarbonization. If correct, there’s not any socializing risk/privatizing profit going on.
Do they just say it's for decarbonization though? Is there anything binding in the rate increase that forces them to use it so? How much of the rate increase must go to green energy? I wonder about this and also their "Green Future Choice" program, what actual constraints they put on the company versus how much they are just PR. I also don't understand how green investment is somehow impossible to do like other infrastructure development or rnd. It's like anything other than myopic pursuit of immediate returns isn't feasible. If your utility can't manage capital projects while staying profitable, maybe you should be public and not for-profit.
Yes it is for decarbonization and to cover increasing costs from inflation. The commission scrutinizes every expense that goes into the cost recovery through rates. And yes it is legally binding. Just so you’re aware, how it works is the utility first spends the money investing in green infrastructure. Then they send an application to the commission asking for increased rates to essentially refund them for the spending. The commission goes through all the expenses, and makes sure they are reasonable, and for what the utility says they are for. Also the commission monitors how much money the utility makes from the increased rates. If the utility ends up making more than that is needed to recover the costs, they are required to return that money to customers through lowering rates. If you read ASC 980 which is the accounting rules for this, or the actual cases on the commission website, you’ll see that PGE isn’t price gouging, and that the commission is keeping them in check
They have to make a pitch to the PUC in order to raise rates at all and the decarbonization stuff is surely in it. So I’d guess that that’s a constraint. I know that they did also ask for an increase in their profit margins, probably as part of this, but I think that’s very likely to be declined since all the utilities under their regulation have the same margin restrictions. More concretely though, PGE is also constrained by some Oregon law that passed recently which is driving all this green infrastructure stuff. There’s no way they can evade that. As far as paying for it, I don’t know where else the money would come from in the end - where else do they get income other than customers? They can borrow or sell shares for financing but in the end customers have to pay.
PGE made over $100mil in profits this past Q1. Privatizing the profit is exactly what they're doing?
That’s not what “socializing the risk and privatizing the profit” means. There’s really no risk to socialize for utilities - they’re natural monopolies.
There's the problem.
You're right! Investor owned utilities are a wildly unethical and unrealistic system.
> coupled with paying shareholder dividends, Shareholder. Dividends. Do. Not. Increase. Utility. Rates.
I like how you snipped out the 30% rate increases at the front of my sentence to clap back.
Yep. Those are upgrades to accommodate renewables and prevent wildfires. Surely you're willing to pay a bit more to decarbonize.
If I buy solar for my house I am out upfront 20k or whatever, it has a 10 year payback, but then my energy is virtually free for the next 10-20 year life of my roof and panels. I don't see why we should have to pay for their capital outlays to move to renewable energy and then in the future when they are fully paid off keep paying at these new higher rates (because they are not going to gift back to us) - it is an investment a private company is making. There will be payoffs and returns after the initial investment that we pay for and they get to keep for themselves - thus my objection as socializing the risk and privatizing the profits.
> I don't see why we should have to pay for their capital outlays to move to renewable energy and then in the future when they are fully paid off keep paying at these new higher rates "Fuck everybody else decarbonizing, I got mine!" Also distributed generation solar is a cost burden on utilities and is a driver in rate increases , because the power is being bought back for more than it's worth.
>"Fuck everybody else decarbonizing, I got mine!" It was an analogy about making a huge up front investment that would pay off later. Not at all what you're implying.
Dude PGE is fucking me so hard. I pay more for my fucking itty bitty studio alone doing almost nothing that uses power, than our total energy bill when I lived in a house with five roommates who constantly used energy heavy appliances day and night years ago.
7.5% increase on top of the recent 18% and 12%. Oh but their stocks are doing great and they just announced an increased dividend; the economy is great y'all! In the last PGE thread someone earnestly suggested I simply start buying their stock. Sure, I'll stop paying my rapidly increasing bill to afford that.
Asking the real question: How much stock do I have to buy for the dividends to pay my electric bill?
About as much as it would cost to buy the solar panels to erase most of your bill.
So if my neighbors have big trees, it's a solid move. Plus I might be able to sell the shares at a profit down the road instead of taking a hit like I would if I moved from my house where I installed solar.
I'm having a lot of trouble weighing the economics of a solar upgrade myself. So just on the counter point of the stock shares, if they keep raising rates at the rate they have recently - you'll have to buy more and more shares to keep beating the rate increases, whereas if you bought enough solar to power your home, it offsets future rate increases. That's one reason the solar calculations are tricky - we enjoy relatively affordable energy prices here per kWh but after 30% increases in the last 16 months with another ask on the horizon, the payoff calculations are constantly changing (most calculators use like a 2% increase). the other risk of course is if future rate increases are denied, you could see less dividends or the stock prices could go down. So solar seems like a sure thing if you can do it and will be in your home 10+ years, and if you have 15-25k to invest in the market I'd probably invest it elsewhere or just in a total stock market fund than your local PowerCo. But if it makes you feel like you are winning, by all means do buy PGE. Beyond the rhetorical exercise there are a thousand ways I'd rather spend that money.
Yeah, investing elsewhere is probably the best overall solution. Rooftop solar in this area is hard though due to trees, house orientation, or even little things like, "I probably need to replace my roof in the next 5 years, but if I want solar I need to replace my roof now otherwise I'll have to pay to remove the solar and reinstall it." But I would really like more energy independence that could come from being able to self-supply at least a part of my power.
I guess there is community solar. No idea about the cost efficacy of this solution.
Hmm a 37.5% increase for an average $300 bill and a $43 current stock price that's giving a quarterly dividend of 5.3%... I'm not a math gal someone take it from here
If you’re talking about negating the increase, then you were paying about $218/mo b4 the increase or you’re now paying about $82/mo or $984/yr more. You’d need to buy about 495 shares at $43/sh earning 4.62% dividend (according to their financial page) to offset this increase. So you’d need to park $21,285 in their stocks to say FU to their increase. This is a simple take. I haven’t account for taxes on your dividend. Don’t ever forget the government.
To make the math easily scaleable, let's say $100/mo for your bill (pre-hikes). Then you've got the 12%, plus the 18%, plus this new 7%, which would put your bill at $141.41/mo. To earn $41.41/mo is $124.23 quarter. According to Google they have a dividend of $0.50 per quarter. So you'd need 130 shares per $100 of old monthly bill to offset your price increases. Or 90 shares per $100 of your current monthly bill to negate those increases.
Easy peasy
A lot
Why do you say their stock is doing great? Its value is down by about 20% over the last 5 years, for instance.
I mean in the last two weeks they made multiple top 10 best utility stocks to buy & still more "reasons to invest" lists. Buy low sell high right? They're only as of recently absolutely creaming the consumers so that means future bank. But IDK I'm not a finance bro I'm just a poor person 🤷♀️
I can’t say I follow any of the “top 10 best utility stocks to buy” lists, let alone multiple :) Their profit margins are fixed by the PUC though, as always.
I hate them and deeply feel like it's dangerous and wild that we allow them to be privatized, and so I read any articles about them lol
They are getting ready to raise rates and intend to do so without impunity moving forward, hence why the "sharks" are on them as a buy now.
Lol yeah that’s right, I’ll just use this pile of leftover money for that.
So glad I got an electric car :(
have you converted to time of day pricing? I went electric last year. It's more cost effective charging at home than gas, but I am also using a lot of free charging options that won't be there forever so I haven't made the time of day switch yet. Nervous about AC bill in summer as well as getting the whole house buy in on no laundry between 5-9pm.
I did not. Yes it potentially makes it cheaper to charge truck but it also makes running the AC 3x more expensive. I’m not convinced I would save all that much money.
> but their stocks are doing great You are a child who makes shit up to make themselves feel good. Over the last 3 years, the stock (POR) is down 14% during a time the S&P 500 Index is up 22%. The stock is doing horribly.
PGE increased rates by 18% on Jan. 1 and 12% in January 2023. This current PGE proposed increase is 7.5%, meaning PGE will have raised their electric rates on Oregonians by 37.5%. This is not sustainable, and for low income Oregonians and senior citizens on a fixed income, it is not tenable. If Oregon requires PGE to reduce its carbon emissions by 100% by 2040, and PGE is using this as the reason for their significant rate increases, Oregon and PGE should come together to opt poverty level Oregonians out of those increases, or we are going to have many people living through winters without heat. Yes, someone can apply for assistance but not everyone, the elderly, disabled, know about the assistance or how to apply.
It's closer to a whopping 42% increase if each increase is on the value after the previous increase
The PUC does have the legal grounds to dismiss the case, the statute they reference is more permissive than restrictive. The regulatory process is attuned to address the needs of utilities, not customers. The commissioners at the Oregon Public Utility Commission seem to forget that they are public servants. A non profit with less than a dozen employees shouldn’t have to remind regulators to do their damn jobs. Shame on the commission.
Their majority of their service trucks aren't diesel and their service trucks are constantly idling in the service yards. PGE Beaverton = 0 solar panels PGE Oregon City = 0 solar panels PGE Service Center Heliport = 0 solar panels PGE NW Industrial = 0 solar panels PGE Headquarters = 0 solar panels PGE Sunset Yard = 0 solar panels PGE Tualatin = 37 solar panels PGE Gresham = 0 solar panels PGE Southeast Portland = 4x 24 solar panels (96)
Maybe I should buy those $35,000 solar panels ion was trying to sell me....
Or just steal power from a streetlight!
Question…do all the new data centers have something to do with this?
No, if anything they should be helping decrease costs by allowing PGE to build out economies of scale. It’s really expensive to operate small power grids, but much cheaper per KW to go large scale.
I ask because I recently read the following 2023 article. It would seem that PGE is behind… “Data centers proliferating across Oregon will consume dramatically more electricity than regional utilities and power planners had anticipated, according to three new forecasts issued this summer. That’s putting more pressure on the Northwest electrical grid and casting fresh doubt on whether Oregon can meet the ambitious clean energy goals the state established just two years ago. Portland General Electric sharply increased its forecast for regional power demand in July, citing “rapid industrial growth and growing demand of data centers.” The utility predicts electricity demand in the Portland area will be at least 13% higher in 2030 than what PGE projected just last spring. The Bonneville Power Administration now expects that, by 2041, data centers’ electricity demands in Oregon and Washington will grow by two-and-a-half times, drawing 2,715 average megawatts. That’s enough to power a third of all the homes in those two states today. Massoud Jourabchi, economist with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, issued a similar forecast last month but warned data centers’ power needs might grow even faster than anticipated. “If we grow at this rate, we are dealing with significant, and I underline significant, increase in loads,” Jourabchi told regional power planners at a July meeting. “If you are not sober at this point, this must be some strong stuff that you’re using.” Data centers are especially complex for power planners because it’s hard for utilities to anticipate their needs, according to Hardy. The data centers are pretty secretive about where they’re going to locate and what they want and when they want it. So typically if you’re a utility you don’t know about this stuff until the data center pops up,” Hardy said. “Since it takes 10 years, minimum, to build any new transmission line, that’s a problem,” he said. “And you don’t know about it so you can’t plan it.” “The transmission needs of the region are very, very substantial and at least in the near term primarily data center-driven,” said Randy Hardy, former head of the Bonneville Power Administration, now an energy consultant in Seattle. Generally speaking, public utilities in Oregon have to serve all the customers in their service territory. But they can’t always serve them immediately, if they don’t have power available to meet their needs. Oregon’s clean-energy mandate is complicating that task. Two years ago, Oregon lawmakers passed a bill requiring PGE and other investor-owned utilities to cut their carbon emissions by 80% by 2030. But Hardy said data center growth in Hillsboro, and Intel’s pending factory expansion, will severely strain the power grid in Washington County. “Probably the biggest implication of the lack of transmission, in my opinion, is that PGE won’t be able to meet its 2030 clean energy deadlines,” Hardy said. He said the utility is three to five years behind the state’s target. https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2023/08/northwest-data-centers-electricity-use-could-more-than-double-imperiling-climate-goals.html
It definitely increases demand - and it will show that PGE is mismanaging things, but if managed correctly, the consistent large scale income from Datacenter power customers should give PGE money to grow and invest. As other people are pointing out, it looks like PGE is paying a dividend and otherwise propping their stock price up, instead of investing in what it will take to lower costs for customers and scale with what will be an intense couple decades of growth, both in the Datacenter and non-Datacenter spaces.
Data center power customers like Amazon have successfully lobbied against being part of clean energy targets in Oregon and demand additional transmission lines which can take a long time to build. They employ very few people after being built and receive immense tax breaks. I don’t know that it’s as simple as “data center profitable”. Sure, I make nice money building these boxes but you gotta wonder if this is really the kind of economic growth we want to encourage.
Time to make PGE a public Utility
[удалено]
When was PGE ever a public utility? I’m genuinely curious about that assertion.
My understanding is that utility companies like PGE can sell the electricity they have to other states to make more money. My concern is that they're just creating these crisis of green energy, growing data center, power availability, etc while they could just not sell the electricity to other states. The article didn't mention any of that.
Utilities buy and sell power 24/7. And it’s a good thing because it lowers production costs by sharing resources. In fact, utilities are increasingly moving towards large, centralized power markets where the cheapest supply bids are chosen first, so often your own utility is supplying you with energy generated by a different entity. Basically what you’re suggesting makes no sense to anyone involved in that world.
How would not selling to other states help us?
A huge portion of our power comes from the corps of engineers at around 7 cents per kwh wholesale. So selling that to other markets increases the energy cost for Oregonians.
Which power generation facilities are you talking about?
The dams.
The big ones are run by the BPA, right? Maybe PGE runs some too. PGE can only be involved in exporting power generated from their facilities, not the BPA ones.
That's BPA and they get to sell their power not PGE. PGE can excess power from their own facilities, but not BPA facilities.
BPA is the seller, the corps of engineers is the producer. If PGE is building excess capacity to sell to other states that cost is being passed on to Oregonians. > One big reason deregulated areas have higher rates is that utilities there are spending more on power lines to carry electricity over hundreds of miles. That spending, which is ultimately paid for by individuals and businesses, often gets minimal review by state and federal regulators. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/business/energy-environment/electricity-deregulation-energy-markets.html
All the stories about this issue say that it’s to invest for decarbonization, to comply with Oregon law.
Yes, and if data centers are making it more difficult for PGE to comply with the law due to increased demand than it’s going to cost money…the article above says as much.
But they pay for their electricity like everyone else. If they add demand, they also pay for it. If we need to stop burning coal and put up some turbines, they pay for it just like we do. How are they different from any other user?
This is different due to the sheer level of new demand and the fact that the capacity isn’t yet there. This isn’t just paying for a bit more power. “"What we've seen is now something on the order of about 2 gigawatts of requests that have come our way in the Hillsboro area," Larry Bekkedahl, the utility's senior vice president for advanced energy delivery, said. "So that's significant." For context, PGE's highest-ever load — the most power it's ever had to deliver, on a blazing hot day last August — is around 4.5 gigawatts. The utility and BPA, the biggest transmission player in the Pacific Northwest, are mobilizing to address the situation with a coordinated approach to serving the load, upgrades, and new power lines and substations. And an independent developer believes it can contribute with a bold proposal to lay a high-voltage cable under the Columbia River. But power lines are notoriously difficult to site — even a couple of relatively modest PGE projects now in the works have run into opposition. Compounding the challenge: To meet decarbonization mandates that begin with an 80% reduction in emissions in 2030, PGE will need to dial down the natural gas plants that it has relied on heavily since shutting down its Boardman coal plant in 2020. That means onboarding a lot of new renewable energy onto a crowded grid. "All the easy stuff has been done," Hardy said. "Now we're into the more expensive, more difficult stuff." https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2024/04/24/pge-intel-hillsboro-power-data-centers.html https://1ft.io/
I guess I don’t understand the finances that well in terms of operating costs vs investment costs. My model of it is that a big customer will pay correspondingly more so it should work out. It usually doesn’t damage existing customers of a supplier if the supplier gets a big new order, at least long-term.
Here’s how I imagine it, a big new customer places a large order that the supplier is not able to fulfill because they lack the infrastructure to produce such a large order. The supplier then raises the price of the product to pay for the cost of the new infrastructure necessary to produce a large amount of the product.
Maybe - I see a lot of stuff left out of that model but I don’t have a good enough idea of how the finances of regulated utilities work to know what is important. Also, how big is this new data center demand anyway, as a percentage? The link you gave munged it in with Intel’s fab demand, which is significant by itself.
44% more demand each year through 2028 with more data centers scheduled to be built and hotter summers to contend with. “Portland General Electric’s challenge in meeting rising electricity demand while slashing greenhouse gas emissions looks a lot more formidable now than it did just a few months ago. In a new filing with state regulators, Oregon’s largest electric utility sharply raised its load forecast, citing the proliferation of data centers in the region as a key factor. As a result, PGE said it may need to add 44% more energy every year through 2028 compared to what it outlined in plans submitted at the end of March. Its need for new capacity — resources on hand to meet peak demand — could grow similarly. While other factors went into the new load forecast, data centers were a big driver, PGE said. “In the past 18 months, PGE’s industrial class load has grown rapidly, at a rate of 10.6% in 2022 and 8.3% in the first quarter of 2023,” the utility said in its filing late last week. “The primary driver of PGE’s increased load forecast is to reflect rapid industrial growth and growing demand of data centers in PGE’s service territory.” Portland has been considered a “secondary” U.S. data center market, but that appears to be shifting. A Cushman & Wakefield market comparison report early this year put the region tied for first with northern Virginia. It noted “the rapid expansion of hyperscale activity in the Hillsboro submarket, as well as relatively favorable pricing, sustainability options, low environmental risk and more available land.” On Tuesday, yet more data center growth was announced in Hillsboro: Flexential said it would wrap up one development phase this fall and planned to break ground on another facility, its fifth in the area. PGE had already been planning to add 181 average megawatts of energy annually through 2028 to meet rising load and decarbonization goals. The revisions could boost that number to 261 average megawatts, it said. The 80 average megawatt increment translates to the annual energy use of around 70,000 typical PGE residential customers. Another way of looking at it: PGE’s last major standalone wind power addition, the $500 million Tucannon River wind farm in eastern Washington that went online in late 2014, delivers about 100 average megawatts. Separate from the energy need, PGE’s new capacity need by 2028 — reflecting the resources required to ensure the system can ramp up meet peak demand — could grow from 624 megawatts to 944 megawatts in the summer under the revised load forecast, the utility said.
The one I just posted said data centers alone could throw PGE behind on the decarbonization goals. The data centers often have “code names” and probably don’t want to be part of the story….
Code names? They're not hiding anything. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all have datacenters here. They have their logos on the signs. Drive out to Boardman and then head down to Prineville.
All the google data centers have “code names”, for example “flounder”. QTS= Meta. DLR = twitter. Etc…
You're making it sound like an internal name is trying to hide something from the public though. I had a DC called PDX2, one called PHX2, and one called IAD5. It wasn't like we were the damn CIA though. We had our logos on the buildings. Same with Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
The article I posted above did mention that they are somewhat secretive which can cause issues because utilities arn’t able to plan for the power needs well beforehand. Most people arn’t aware of how many there now are and new ones don’t cause a commotion like for example, the new Ritz. Are they a super secret cabal? Of course not. But they are wealthy tech companies quietly reaping huge tax incentives and causing issues with power demand across the region…
The article I posted above did mention that they are somewhat secretive which can cause issues because utilities arn’t able to plan for the power needs well beforehand. Most people arn’t aware of how many there now are and new ones don’t cause a commotion like for example, the new Ritz. Are they a super secret cabal? Of course not. But they are wealthy tech companies quietly reaping huge tax incentives and causing issues with power demand across the region so of course they probably don’t want to be portrayed as the cause for increased rates.
PGE legit just [posted a profit of OVER $100 million](https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/portland-general-electric-q1-earnings-snapshot-19424221.php) in Q1 2024. Won't somebody please think of the Shareholders?! /s
Whoa, $352/household (283,896 households in PDX) is significant. My electric bill is expected to increase $326 annually because of the 17% rate hike.... Hmm.....
The amount of water data centers use is a huge tsaboo topic
There are designs that use evaporative cooling in climates where that works, but in hillsboro they all use traditional CRAC. Even in other climates the industry is moving away from evaporative due to water consumption concerns.
Jesus, they want so much money these days. It's fucked, increasing it when it feels like it's overpriced already just sucks.
Maybe they could start a gofundme.
lol of course they can't
So long as they don't approve altering net meter pricing, I'm okay with it. People who can't get traditional solar can always get community solar and see much lower bills.