Oregon: data centers & your electric bill
The numbers residents cite at hearings — grid, water, and regulator contacts for Oregon, from the free GridWatch toolkit.
Subscribe by RSS — moratorium changes and community headlines for Oregon.
As of July 2026 · changes over months · Source: U.S. Data Center Power Map by State — ElectricChoice.com compilation (updated July 2026; CC-BY 4.0). Underlying load research: LBNL 2024 US Data Center Energy Usage Report; rates: EIA
Facility counts vary by directory because each one draws the boundary differently — DataCenterMap lists 44 in Alabama where this table says 35, since it counts small network rooms alongside hyperscale campuses. Cite the TWh figure rather than the facility count when you can; it is the number that speaks to grid impact. Underlying load research is LBNL-2001637 (Dec 2024).
Your regulator
Oregon Public Utility Commission — website · file a complaint
Official state energy data: EIA Oregon electricity profile — generation, prices, and consumption from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Pushback already happening in Oregon
| Where | Level | Status | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salem | Local | Proposed | Council voted unanimously to *begin* the process — a 60- or 120-day moratorium still has to come back for adoption, and staff must first give the state notice and show a compelling need. No pause is in effect; a developer advanced its plan ahead of the vote | Source read 2026-08-04 |
| Oregon (statewide) | State | Proposed | Democratic lawmakers proposed a three-year moratorium on new large data centers | Source read 2026-08-04 |
| Oregon (enterprise zone tax) | State | Enacted | HB 4084 — makes new data centers ineligible for Enterprise Zone property tax breaks until 90 days after the 2027 session adjourns. Separate from the proposed 3-year construction moratorium. Oregon DC tax breaks cost ~\$450M/year | Source read 2026-08-13 |
| Hillsboro | Local | Enacted | Data center permitting ban | Unverified |
As of August 2026 · changes weekly — re-check before citing
Illustrative rather than exhaustive — dozens of localities churn weekly, and this tracks the ones we have read a source for. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to the ordinance, the enacting body's own page, or a datable report of the vote, and were read on that date. Rows marked *unverified* came from bulk compilation and have not been checked against a primary source — the locality, the year, and the status may all be off. Verify one of those with the town clerk before citing it as precedent. **Expiry is derived, not asserted.** A row with a documented end date flips to *Expired* on its own once that date passes. A time-limited moratorium whose start date was never documented keeps showing as enacted — that is a known gap, not a claim that it is still in force. Moratoriums are also routinely extended, so an expiry date is the earliest it could have ended, not proof that it did.
Case studies
The Dalles, OR — Google funded the water system — and its share of the water kept climbing
Under a 2021 agreement Google paid roughly $28.5M toward upgrades to The Dalles' water treatment and storage, including an aquifer storage and recovery system it later handed to the city, and bought and donated 3.88 million gallons/day of water rights from a closed aluminium smelter. What the deal did not include was a cap on Google's own draw. When The Oregonian sued for the usage records, the city spent 13 months fighting disclosure before settling — and the records showed the campus using about 29% of the city's water, rising to roughly 40% (some 550 million gallons a year) by 2025. Infrastructure money is not the same protection as a volume limit. This is the case that shows the difference, and the reason to put a cap in writing.
Known data center campuses in Oregon
| Operator | Location | Tenant | Filing LLC |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Dalles | Land-acquisition shells: Jet Stream LLC, Sharka LLC | ||
| Meta | Prineville | Meta | Codename shells: Greater Kudu, Raven Northbrook, Stadion, Wobniar, Pinnacle Mountain |
| Amazon (AWS) | Umatilla / Boardman | Amazon (AWS) | Vadata, Inc. — AWS's build/operating entity on many permits |
⏳ No verification date recorded · changes over months · Source: Operator ownership & filing-LLC naming patterns — compiled from operator releases and county filings, then checked against SEC EDGAR full-text search. Composite, not a single citation: look the entity up yourself before naming it in a filing
Each row carries its own attribution level — first-party rows come from the operator's own site, but colocation and REIT ownership was compiled from trade press and never passed an independent fact-check. Check the attribution column before citing a row.
Every data center already built in Oregon
The campuses above are the ones GridWatch tracks by operator and filing LLC. For the full inventory — street addresses of every existing facility, including the smaller colocation and network sites — DataCenterMap keeps a public directory for Oregon.
Two caveats before you cite it at a hearing: it lists facilities that already exist, so a newly proposed campus will not appear; and it counts a small network room the same as a hyperscale campus, so the facility count is not a measure of power draw or community impact.
What communities in Oregon have won
- Morrow County (Amazon (AWS)) — Fees in lieu of taxes, negotiated in the open: ~$40M over 15 years across five new data centers in exchange for enterprise-zone abatements worth an estimated $1B (2023). Cited here as a benchmark of what a payment-in-lieu deal looks like — including how much is forgone to get it Source 1 · verified 2026-08-05
- The Dalles (Google) — Infrastructure money, but no cap — the cautionary benchmark. Google paid ~$28.5M toward city water treatment and storage and donated 3.88M gallons/day of water rights, yet nothing limited its own draw, which reached ~40% of city supply by 2025. Ask for the volume limit in writing, not just the capital contribution Source 1 · Source 2 · verified 2026-08-05
Latest Oregon data center news
Video coverage mentioning Oregon
State municipal league: League of Oregon Cities
A data center was proposed near you?
The free toolkit walks you through it in five steps: who's really behind the LLC, what it costs your community, what to do this week, and a downloadable action pack — speech, letters, flyer, and CBA targets included.