Oregon Schedule 96 / 1¢/kWh surcharge / 30-yr at 220 MW

Plain-English framing. Oregon's PUC issued Order 26-154 on May 7, with a 34-day countdown to today's effective date. The new Schedule 96 tariff applies to data centers and other loads above 20 MW. Contract length scales with load size: 10 years at 20 MW, climbing to 30 years for loads of 220 MW or more. Minimum demand charges are 90% of contracted capacity (the customer pays for at least 90% of what they requested every month no matter what they consume). Customers pay 100% of distribution-network upgrade costs upfront. And the kicker: loads above 100 MW pay an additional 1¢/kWh surcharge on every kilowatt-hour they consume. That 1¢/kWh surcharge is the most aggressive single dial in any US tariff. At a 100 MW data center running at 100% load factor, it works out to roughly $9M per year in incremental cost on top of energy and demand charges. At 500 MW it's $45M per year. Separately, the rate impact on PGE's specific customer classes (the headline-grabbing '26% data center rate increase / 1.3% residential decrease') is still pending. PUC staff requested more time; the decision now slides from June 10 to July 7. So today is the framework activation, not the dollar-impact resolution.

Primary source · Utility Dive / Oregon PUC / Yahoo News (PGE delay) ↗