Around 140,000 homes and businesses in Washington state could be paying their power bills to someone new in the coming year.

Portland General Electric has agreed to spend about $1.9 billion to buy retail electricity customers in Washington from another big investor-owned utility in the Pacific Northwest, PacifiCorp. PGE will also acquire a major natural gas power plant plus three wind power plants from PacifiCorp, known as Pacific Power in Oregon and Washington.

The deal still needs regulator approval and could take a year to complete, according to the two companies.

It’s a major boost for PGE, which currently only has Washington customers in the Vancouver area. PGE is partnering with investment and insurance firm Manulife, which will hold a 49% stake in the separate subsidiary PGE will create for the new Washington operations.

The deal allows PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, to exit the retail electricity market in Washington.

PacifiCorp currently provides electricity to 140,000 homes and businesses in Washington. It has two service areas in the state. The largest swath stretches from just north of Yakima down to Sunnyside. The other is a smaller area from Walla Walla north towards Dayton.

“This is a targeted step toward ensuring the continued delivery of safe, reliable power to our nearly two million customers in the West and Intermountain West,” Darin Carroll, PacifiCorp’s CEO, said in a statement. “This will improve the company’s financial stability while simplifying our operations to support our long-term commitment to customers in each of our remaining states.”

In Oregon, PacifiCorp has settled complex and expensive legal battles over its alleged involvement in sparking the major 2020 wildfires, costing the utility more than $1.5 billion. Company officials have said those expenses have strained PacifiCorp at a time when providing safe and affordable electricity is already becoming more costly.

“Diverging policies among the six states PacifiCorp serves have created extraordinary pressure, affecting the company’s ability to meet demand reliably and at the lowest cost to customers,” PacifiCorp leaders said in the statement announcing the deal with PGE. “These challenges have impacted the company’s financial stability, liquidity and credit ratings.”

Company leaders expect the sale to help shore up PacifiCorp’s finances.

The deal comes as utilities across the country are contending with how to provide power to a growing population on outdated transmission systems that are massively expensive to upgrade. Meanwhile, rising demand for electricity from the technology sector, including power-hungry data centers — some of which call the Pacific Northwest home — and the growth of artificial intelligence are putting further pressure to generate more energy at lower costs.

At the same time, utilities are struggling with the current effects of climate change while mitigating future impacts. Hotter summers and colder winters drive up energy demand. However, energy generated from coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels contributes to climate change through carbon emissions. As a result, many government policies are pushing utilities to transition to low or no-emission energy sources.

Investor-owned utilities are dealing with these challenges while also on the hook for providing a regulated return on investments to shareholders.

The deal between PGE gives the Portland company control over the Chehalis natural gas plant. It’s the second largest in the state in terms of natural gas generation capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration, the data and analysis arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. PGE will also acquire three wind power plants as well as 4,500 miles of transmission and distribution lines.

Officials with PGE said that customers in Oregon and Washington will not see their bills go up due to “costs associated with executing the acquisition and transaction financing,” according to the statement announcing the deal.

Oregon’s Citizen Utility Board, a nonprofit group advocating for electricity ratepayers, expects the sale to affect energy customers across the region.

“As a multistate utility, PacifiCorp selling generation in Washington could have a ripple effect in not just Oregon, but also Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and California,” Charlotte Shuff, a spokesperson for Oregon CUB, said in an emailed statement. “A change this big will need to be planned with customers’ impacts at the top of mind.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/02/17/portland-general-electric-pacificorp-oregon-washington/