Summary

  • PGE’s October 29 presentation separates 473 MW under construction for five data-centre customers from a different 2026 executed contract of up to 420 MW that is not yet under construction.
  • PGE expects the latter contract to energize in 2028 and ramp to full capacity in 2033. Its 1.3 GW of additional large-load requests are a queue, not another block of contracted or delivered data-centre power.
  • Deposits, collateral, minimum-demand requirements and exit fees are the protections PGE lists. The company does not disclose the unnamed customer’s payment schedule or the size of those protections.

A large number with a long calendar

Four hundred and twenty megawatts takes up little space on an investor slide. The dates beside it do more work. Portland General Electric says its 2026 executed contract is not under construction, is expected to energize in 2028 and should reach full capacity in 2033. The contract exists; the full load is a later operating target.

PGE’s October 29 presentation puts three different states on the same page. First: 473 MW from contracts executed in 2025 and 2026, under construction with five data-centre customers and included in the pipeline. Second: a separate contract executed in 2026 for up to 420 MW, not under construction. Third: an additional 1.3 GW of incremental large-load requests for 2028 and beyond. PGE says the slide’s figures are customer capacity as of October 29, 2026. Requests, construction and future energization are not interchangeable milestones.

That distinction is easy to lose when the conversation turns to how much new load a utility can serve. The 1.3 GW request queue is not a signed order book, and PGE does not label every request as a data-centre project. The 420 MW contract is more advanced than a request but less advanced than a project under construction. Adding all three figures would produce a bigger headline and a worse operating forecast.

The expected 2028 start and 2033 full-capacity ramp matter because a contract ceiling does not say how much electricity a customer will draw in any particular year. It does not reveal monthly usage, the sequence of load additions or the billable demand at each stage. PGE has supplied two dates, not the customer-specific schedule connecting them.

The protection list has no price tags

PGE says its large-load contracts include capacity deposits, collateral, minimum-demand requirements and exit fees. Those mechanisms put a cost on reserving capacity, using less than promised or leaving. They are the difference between a signed megawatt figure and an obligation that can help fund infrastructure built around it.

The company does not publish the 420-MW customer’s identity, its individual demand floor, deposit, collateral or exit-fee formula. Nor does the presentation show the customer’s price or the utility’s project-level investment schedule. Without those terms, readers can see that protections exist but cannot measure how much protection this contract carries through a five-year ramp.

Oregon has built a rulebook for qualifying large energy users. Enrolled House Bill 3546 defines a covered facility as one that uses, or can use, at least 20 MW and is primarily engaged in a specified computing-infrastructure service. The law calls for a separate tariff, cost allocation that assigns service costs to the class or facility, and service contracts of at least 10 years with an estimated start date and a minimum payment tied to projected use. The enrolled law sets the framework; it does not reveal the terms of PGE’s unnamed agreement.

The Oregon Public Utility Commission says it approved Schedule 96 for PGE’s large data-centre and other large-load customers. The commission says future PGE data-centre agreements must include predictable charges when a customer does not use utility-built infrastructure and enough clean resources must be available before service begins. PGE’s own slide says the tariff supports affordability and enables margin expansion from its fastest-growing customer class. The contract and tariff decide who carries the cost while demand climbs.

The missing document is the customer-specific service and payment schedule. It would show when the 420 MW becomes billable, what the customer must pay before reaching full load and how unused capacity is charged. Until that schedule appears, investors can treat 420 MW as a contracted ceiling with a dated ramp, not as 420 MW of current consumption.

Sources