The BESS Battery Explosion: Massive Facilities Coming To Power North Hillsboro’s Silent One-Gigawatt Power Shift

The Real Story – A Column: Editor’s Note – Our Power Rates Are Going Up Again April 1st- This story will tell you why- see lower section

HILLSBORO, OR — While the Oregon Legislature is fighting over land grabs and data center tax giveaways, PGE and the Big Three are pulling off something that would make even the biggest environmental offenders blush.  As the world watches the sleek glass data centers of the Hillsboro Fiber “Ring” rise along the Sunset Highway, a much denser, more volatile infrastructure is quietly surrounding them. As of late February 2026, North Hillsboro has officially become the site of a one-gigawatt BESS “Battery City,” a concentration of energy storage so massive it rivals the output of a nuclear reactor.

The speed of this “Battery Explosion” is driven by a simple, brutal reality: the data center industry has outgrown the power grid. Now, to keep the servers humming, global capital is building a “walled garden” of electricity that sits right in our backyards. There is no way that the Data Centers are going to go without power – and with no choices left, they, along with their partners at PGE, have been working on land, money, and lithium ion to make sure this is indespinsible Data-Fiber Ring never goes down.

The Scope: One Gigawatt and Counting

In the last 10 days alone, the scale of this shift has come into sharp focus. With Portland General Electric’s (PGE) February 17 announcement, the map of North Hillsboro now features a cluster of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) that dwarfs almost any other industrial hub in the country.    PGE announced two more massive BESS Lithium Ion Batteries coming to North Hillsboro:

Additional Procurement Activities – PGE has also entered into the following agreements:

• Meadowlark BESS – a 20-year storage capacity agreement for a 200 MW BESS located in Washington County, Oregon. This project will be owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, LLC and has an estimated commercial operation date at the end of 2027.

• Nottingham BESS – a 20-year storage capacity agreement for a 200 MW BESS located in Washington County, Oregon. This project has an estimated commercial operation date in 2028.

These two will add to the 4 BESS arrays we had already covered and disclosed here at the Herald.  And the Herald reported yesterday that informants have told us that the grid is full – that effectively, PGE can no longer support growth here in Washington County because of what we have allowed to happen here in Hillsboro.  Let that sink in- and what does that mean for real job creators who might come to Sollman’s 1,700 acres?  We will likely not have the power for them- and maybe not the water.

Read All Of Our BESS Stories here: 

Hillsboro’s Lithium Ion BESS Battery Boom Is Happening in the Quiet — and That’s the Problem

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BESS Batteries

The “Arbitrage” Game: Who Really Pays?

The economic engine of these batteries is Price Arbitrage. The cycle works like this:

1. The Charge: Late at night (11 PM – 6 AM), the batteries pull “off-peak” power from the grid when it is cheapest.
2. The Soak: They “soak up” excess wind and solar that the grid can’t handle, often at near-zero cost to the operator.
3. The Discharge: During peak hours (4 PM – 9 PM), when your lights are on, and data centers are at full tilt, the batteries push that power back out.

The Catch: According to PGE’s Schedule 122 filings for January 2026, the cost of this “battery capacity” has spiked by 64% in the last year. While residential rates are currently “shielded” by temporary deferrals, industrial users are paying roughly $237 per kW-year just for the right to use this stored power. This creates a “premium tier” of the grid—a reliable, battery-backed loop for the data centers.

The New Front Lines: Batteries Are Being Approved By Washington County While Hillsboro Looks The Other Way

The most contested pieces of this puzzle are the projects moving into the “Quiet Side” of Hillsboro: North Hillsboro’s fringe areas out of sight of the average observer.

• Chickadee BESS: Sited right on the edge of Helvetia, this project includes nearly 200 lithium-ion batteries—each the size of a semi-truck—placed directly across from the Helvetia Market. As the Herald exposed, this project was moved forward like a “landscaping permit” despite its heavy industrial risk.
• Blackberry Grove: Backed by Jupiter Power (a BlackRock company) at NW West Union and Bendemeer Roads. This 10-acre facility was approved in late December 2025 despite a record-breaking 350+ letters of opposition from the “No Batteries in Backyards” movement.
• The Big Meeks Energy Project – Located on Historic Meek Road within the Grand Bargain Lands- this 30-plus-acre monstrosity was uncovered by the Herald and is being planned right now.  No other media networks have covered this project so far.
• PGE Constable – Already operating on NE Constable in the Data Center Alley – 100 Mega-Watts of power running 24-7.
• And now news of these two new projects – Meadowlark and Nottingham, which we can only say will be in North Hillsboro and outside the City boundaries.

Why Now? The “Hyperscale” Desperation

The reason for this sudden explosion isn’t just “green energy.” It’s desperation.

• Grid Gridlock: Traditional utility upgrades take years. Batteries like Aligned’s 31 MW system allow data centers to bypass the “queue” and come online years ahead of schedule by providing their own “on-site” grid support.
• The AI Load: High-density AI chips at sites like Stack Infrastructure (POR03) require a level of power stability that a 1950s-era grid cannot provide. These batteries act as a city-sized “Uninterruptible Power Supply” (UPS).

The Risks: Fire and “Civic Adulthood”

The concerns aren’t just NIMBYism; they are based on the chemistry of Lithium-Ion.

• Thermal Runaway: A single-cell failure can lead to a “cascading” fire that burns at 3,000°F and releases toxic gases such as Hydrogen Fluoride.  It has happened many times and is a very real fear in both the near and long terms.
• Toxic Legacy: As state leaders have been warned, there are still no standard operating procedures for battery fires of this scale, leaving local fire departments to manage a risk they aren’t fully equipped to handle.  And there are no definite plans for how, or even if, such a fire could ever be cleaned up.  The people in MOSS Landing, California, are still trying to figure that out after a catastrophic fire a couple of years ago.

The Bottom Line: Hillsboro is no longer just the “Silicon Forest.” We are now the test case for a new, battery-dependent industrial economy. The power is being stored, the money is moving, and the “Ring” is closing.  If we are at the point where this many batteries are needed to power our current grid, only more batteries or nuclear power will allow things to keep growing at this pace.  We are now home to a massive Data Center Alley and two Fiber Rings, and we may soon be known as Battery City.  

Hillsboro and Washington County are at the breaking point – but for so many of these players, we can see that they are just getting started.

Now to close out – The Herald is providing notice that all of our Residential Power Rates are going up on April 1st – it is a done deal, so get ready.  And the increases can partly be attributed to these BESS batteries.

The April 1st “Surge”: Your Receipt is Due

While the industrial giants on the “Ring” have been operating under their new 2026 rates since January, Hillsboro residents have been living in a temporary bubble. Thanks to the FAIR Act, your rates were frozen for the winter—but that protection expires on April 1, 2026.

When the clock strikes midnight, the “deferral” ends, and the bill for this massive battery explosion lands squarely on your kitchen table.

What’s Hitting Your Bill?

The “Battery Tax” (Schedule 122): You will begin paying for the fixed revenue requirements of the Seaside BESS and the Constable project—infrastructure built primarily to stabilize the grid for high-density data centers.

The Catch-Up Interest: Because these collections were delayed, PGE is authorized under Order No. 25-439 to collect interest on the deferred amount. You aren’t just paying the new rate; you’re paying a “late fee” for a delay you didn’t ask for.

And look at the rates that BESS and industry pay vs what we pay – From PGE:

The “Sample Bill” Comparison (1,000 kWh)

This table compares what a Hillsboro resident pays for 1,000 kWh of power versus the “pro-rata” cost for a large industrial user on the Ring (Schedule 89) for that same amount of energy.

The Disparity: While your residential rate (Schedule 7) is climbing toward 17¢ per kWh, the massive data center campuses next door continue to operate at industrial rates as low as 7¢ per kWh.

WHY DO WE EVEN ACCEPT THE FACT THAT WE RESIDENTS PAY 213% more than Data Centers that produce no jobs and pay no taxes?  

You Can Take Action Before March 15

The OPUC is currently reviewing the final “work papers” for these April adjustments. If you believe residential households shouldn’t subsidize the “uninterruptible power” of global data center firms, now is the time to file a formal protest.

Target Dockets: UE 435 & Schedule 122 Email: PUC.PublicComments@puc.oregon.gov