Chelan PUD Considering Heavy Power Demands Of Data Centers

Chelan PUD is determining how to handle the growing demand for power from large load customers. 

PUD spokesperson Rachel Hansen says there's a major challenge coming from data centers that are being built across the country. 

“These data centers support things like Teams calls or Zoom calls, all the telehealth, their photos,” said Hansen. “All the data that we depend on as a society now depend on data centers.” 

Chelan PUD is encouraging the public to comment as it develops a plan to accommodate the heavy demands of data centers while not affecting its residential and smaller business current base of customers. 

Hansen says their board of commissioners will maintain local control in negotiations with proposals from data centers and other heavy users of power 

"The board will ultimately decide each and every agreement, whether Chelan PUD will agree to those terms and conditions," Hansen said. "So, maintaining local control means that five publicly elected board members, every agreement we make will be at their discretion." 

A typical large data center could require more electricity than what Chelan PUD supplies to all its existing customers. 

Microsoft is currently building a data center in Malaga that will house three to six buildings. 

A challenge for the PUD will be to continue selling its large stock of excess power on the open market, which generates significant revenue, without interference from the high demand of large load customers, such as data centers. 

(The current residential and smaller business base of roughly 50,000 customers only requires a portion of the electricity produced from the PUD’s two hydropower dams.) 

PUD staff are recommending a framework that allows the utility to serve large load customers while also recovering the cost of power and delivery. 

Staff is offering three options for supplying power to heavy load customers. 

In one option, the PUD would find an outside source of power on the open market and resell that power to the large load customer.  

In a second option, the large-load customer would identify a third-party wholesale energy source. The PUD would then purchase the power from that source and resell it to the large load customer. 

In the third option, the PUD would actually supply the power from its own generation and negotiate a contract with the large load customer. 

In all three options, Chelan PUD infrastructure and power lines would be used to deliver the power directly to the customer. 

The next step for the PUD is to gather comments and questions from Chelan County residents at customeroutreach@chelanpud.org  

Comments are being taken now through August 1. Those comments will be reviewed at the August 5 commission meeting. 

PUD commissioners may consider a proposed service agreement with Microsoft on power for its Malaga data center by early September.