The Real Story – A Column
I am totally immersed in every land sale, every movement of equipment, and every whisper in North Hillsboro’s massive industrial buildout. All of that in a City where information is locked down, public notices barely exist, and NDAs and secrecy rule the day. The highest stakes and biggest piles of money in the State are playing out in Hillsboro, Oregon, as Data Centers, Energy deals, and land speculators fight it out. A social media post last Friday just intersected with all of the other information that has been coming in. The puzzle is coming together.
While the public was told that the “Grand Bargain” of 2014 was a 50-year promise, the City of Hillsboro has quietly spent between $150 and $170 Million in taxpayer-backed TIF (Tax Increment Financing) funds to amass a 300-acre industrial superpower site along NW Meek Road. But land is nothing without power—and the Hillsboro Herald has uncovered a major missing piece of the puzzle; we think.
Enter “Big Meeks.” Proposed by NextEra Energy Resources, the “Big Meeks Energy Storage” project is a behemoth lithium-ion battery facility, a BESS rated at 400 Megawatts. It is being promoted as a massive $500 million dollar battery energy storage facility proposed by NextEra Energy Resources.
400 MegaWatts, is that a lot of power?
To understand that number, you have to look at Intel. Intel’s entire Ronler Acres campus draws roughly 400-600 MW. NextEra isn’t proposing a “neighborhood battery”; they are proposing a specialized energy hub that could power a second Intel-sized empire.
The Speculation: Semiconductor Fab or AI Factory?
The location of Big Meeks inside the Industrial UGB—directly adjacent to the City’s 300-acre land assembly and flanked by another 180 acres, making an almost 500-acre development ready tech site—suggests two likely scenarios:
- The Semiconductor “Whale”: A 400 MW battery is the “insurance policy” required by a high-end semiconductor manufacturer (an IDM) to prevent “wafer loss” during grid fluctuations. Needed where the grid is almost maxed out, which ours now is. Or…
- The AI “Factory”: NextEra’s 2026 corporate strategy explicitly targets “AI Data Center Hubs.” These facilities require massive, instantaneous power draws that would crash a standard grid. Big Meeks acts as the “buffer,” allowing a massive AI campus to sit on the City’s 300 acres without turning off the lights in the rest of Hillsboro.
The “Squeeze”: As the City pays massive interest on the $150M+ debt for the land it bought, Senator Janeen Sollman is pushing SB 1586 to ensure that once this 300-acre block is “filled,” the 1,700-acre rural reserve to the west is legally unlocked for the next wave.
The “Big Meeks” battery may be the bridge between the land Hillsboro already bought and the farmland they are about to try to take. And guess what? Public records we searched indicate that NextEra is owned and controlled partly by- you guessed it- BlackRock and their private equity pals! (sources linked at the bottom)
NextEraResources-
| Shareholder | Ownership % | Approx. Shares | Note |
| The Vanguard Group | 10.37% | ~216 Million | The single largest shareholder is also a top owner of PGE. |
| BlackRock, Inc. | 8.21% | ~170 Million | The primary driver of ESG/Data Center capital worldwide. |
| State Street Corp. | 5.49% | ~114 Million | Manages the “Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund” (XLU). |
WE REALLY NEED TO WAKE UP FOLKS – AND OUR LEADERS BETTER LEARN WHAT IS HAPPENING- AND BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THEY DO NOT KNOW-
The Institutional Grip on Oregon’s Energy Utilities
(As of February 2026 reporting)
| Utility Company | Vanguard (%) | BlackRock (%) | State Street (%) | Combined Block | Note |
| NextEra Energy | 10.37% | 8.21% | 5.49% | 24.07% | Developer of Big Meeks (400 MW BESS) |
| NW Natural Gas | 11.47% | 16.06% | 4.88% | 32.41% | Major donor to the Natural Gas PAC |
| PGE | 11.12% | 13.52% | 4.06% | 28.70% | Owner of the Constable BESS and the entire grid |
| PacifiCorp | 11.24%* | 8.35%* | 5.30%* | 24.89% | *Owned via Berkshire Hathaway |
We are now under the control of Private Equity Fimrs including our Power and Gas Bills – Let That Sink In
And according to public records, NextEra Energy, Inc, PAC has been funding and sponsoring organizations and political interests with ties to the Hillsboro land expansions we have been writing about. More on this soon, but let’s have no doubts, and I keep saying it, our power grid and valley is being sold out to and taken over by Private Equity firms who see our land, water, and energy as a complete gold rush!
We have covered other BESS battery installations that have quietly been placed in Hillsboro over the last year. And we have covered how horribly dangerous these facilitites are and can be, and how their economics are not to make our invidual power rates better- rather the power is bougth cheap from PGE and sold high to Data Centers and big users at a max profit.
Closing thoughts- It seems Hillsboro has something up its sleeve. This 400 MW BESS Battery could be a one-off, and it may just send power back onto the grid for nearby data centers. But other tidbits have come my way that have me believing that an AI facility or some other user may be about to enter the story- and this BIG MEEK Battery project has our radar way up!
BONUS CONTENT:
Hillsboro’s Lithium Ion BESS Battery Boom Is Happening in the Quiet — and That’s the Problem
The Updated Hillsboro BESS Comparison – We Are Now Battery City
| Project Name | Power (MW) | Total Storage (MWh) | Status / Location |
| PGE Constable | 75 MW | 300 MWh | Operational (Hillsboro) |
| Jupiter (Blackberry Grove) | 100 MW | 400 MWh | Approved (West Union Rd) |
| Chickadee BESS | 100 MW | 400 MWh | In Review (Near Helvetia Market) |
| Big Meeks (NextEra) | 400 MW | 1,600 MWh | Proposed (North Hillsboro) |
Check Out Our Map- What has Hillsboro Been Buying?
Sources:
I agree that the public should be better informed about the BESS projects being proposed in Washington County. A newer and hopefully safer Sodium Ion based BESS technology looks promising. I got curious about safety of current BESS systems in the US and did a Google search, and found:
“The overall annual failure rate for Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) fires in the USA is estimated to be low, with recent analyses indicating a rate of around
0.3% to less than 1% annually, although some earlier studies suggested higher percentages. While the number of incidents has risen with deployment, the rate of failure has dropped by over 97% between 2018 and 2023, with only a small fraction of projects experiencing issues. ”
I also found a link to another related article:
https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-failure-incident-rate-dropped-97-between-2018-and-2023/
If these new facilities in Hillsboro are approved if seems to me that the newer Sodium Ion type systems would be safer.
There is around 45% of us who don’t need a wake up call because we’ve never voted for Sollman, Pace, Callaway, and every other “D” who is in WashCo government. So any “D” who is upset about this crap, Ho-Hum ….we’ve tried to warn you for years!!!
My belief is that this is that relying on the party a politician belongs to is a mistake. Either side is capable and has in the past sold out its voters. But it does certainly seem to be the case that right now it’s the D’s in Washington County, as you say, that have sold their souls; and so far as I know, the only one who buys souls is the devil.
Two things have been true at once in the Washington County land use discussion:
1. Local Democrats abandon both housing and sustainability pledges without a second thought if prodded forcefully enough by landowners. One of the more unintentionally hilarious portions of the SB4 debate was sitting in on a meeting with Senator Soliman in which she pushed for new public land for data centers while reminding private citizens of their duty to take phone batteries and other tech detritus to Metro collection events.
2. The local GOP presents no other options. If the Washington County Republicans came out with a platform for the conservation of farmland, a moratorium on data center development, and a focus on job and housing creation within Washington County communities, it might find an audience. It might also remind everyone that state hero Tom McCall was a Republican and put his ideas into action for a reason. But we haven’t seen that out of the local or state GOP, who’d sooner fight the culture wars and stir the pot than actually help people.
So we get this… where our best hope is that someone in the GOP forms a McCall-style offshoot or someone among the Dems (looking at Rai’s run for county commissioner very closely) primaries the sitting state officials and resets the table.
Ayla Hofler is totally against this. We cannot lose our class I and II soils or our water basin. Even if they take Willamette River water and pay for it (maybe), the jobs offered are not worth the destruction of our county. The public notice process is unforgivable by the commissioners! I thank t HR e Herald for its coverage. My opponent Callaway is mentioned in these comments I see, endorsed by NW Alliance I have heard. Do not vote Callaway for commissioner in May, vote Ayla for District 4.
I refer to Callaway, Pace, & Sollman as “political prostitutes.” This is not to say that there are not many “R’s” who do not fit in the same shoes. Please try not to fit in this type of footwear.
Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street are majority shareholders in just about everything now. This includes Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and Intel (which is also 10% owned by the US government e.g. Trump). According to George Mason University, all three firms collectively own approximately 88% of the S&P 500 and are the largest shareholders in 40% of publicly traded U.S. companies. Blackrock also has entered into a deal to own 90% of the Panama Ports Company, effectively giving them control over the Panama Canal. It’s not a stretch to assume they’ve also bought local politicians, D or R. Combine this with a few tech heavies and Silicon Valley investment groups, and this is basically how our domestic economy is being run now. That’s when Trump isn’t playing gatekeeper and toll collector at the ports.
If this reminds anyone of something akin to central planning, you’re not far off.