According to DCD, Amazon has filed a formal complaint against Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility PacifiCorp with Oregon’s Public Utility Commission. The cloud giant alleges PacifiCorp failed to meet power obligations dating back to 2021 for Amazon Web Services data centers in the state. One AWS campus reportedly has “insufficient power,” while a second has no power at all. PacifiCorp has also refused to complete its standard contracting process for third and fourth data center campuses. Neither company has commented publicly on the dispute, which involves Amazon’s US West 2 Oregon region that serves as a critical cloud infrastructure hub.
<h2 id="oregon-power-struggle”>The Oregon Power Struggle
This isn’t just some minor billing dispute – we’re talking about Amazon‘s actual ability to keep servers running in one of its key cloud regions. The US West 2 Oregon region has four availability zones, which means there are at least four separate data center facilities that need reliable power. And right now, according to Amazon’s complaint, they’re not getting it.
Here’s the thing about data centers: they’re absolute power hogs. We’re talking about facilities that can consume as much electricity as a small city. When a utility can’t deliver, you can’t just fire up some generators indefinitely. Backup power is for short outages, not permanent solutions.
A Bigger Pattern Emerging
This complaint didn’t come out of nowhere. Back in 2023, Amazon applied to power three data centers in Morrow County with Bloom Energy natural gas fuel cells. They withdrew those plans in June 2024 after facing criticism, but now it makes you wonder – were they exploring fuel cells specifically because they saw this power shortage coming?
And get this: Amazon also signed a power purchase agreement with Avangrid in February 2024 for a 98.4MW wind farm in Oregon. They’re clearly trying to secure whatever power they can get their hands on. But renewable energy projects like wind farms can’t directly power data centers without the grid infrastructure to deliver that electricity.
The Hyperscale Dilemma
This situation highlights a massive challenge facing the entire cloud industry. These companies need enormous amounts of power in specific locations, and utilities are struggling to keep up with the demand. Amazon purchased 400 acres in Arlington, Oregon earlier this year for expansion, but noted it could be “many years” before they actually operate there due to the process of getting permits and electricity.
Basically, we’re seeing the physical limits of cloud growth bump up against reality. You can’t just will a data center into existence – you need actual electrons flowing through wires. And when the utility can’t or won’t provide them, even Amazon’s billions can’t immediately solve the problem.
So what happens next? Either PacifiCorp finds a way to deliver the power Amazon needs, or we might see Amazon getting creative with alternative power solutions. But one thing’s for sure – this power crunch in Oregon is probably just the beginning of similar conflicts we’ll see across the country as data center demand continues to explode.
