Oregon Is Cutting Hillsboro's Data Center Land From 6,600 Acres to 608

The Hillsboro City Council voted on Oct. 6 to advance an ordinance that would cut the land where standalone data centers are allowed as a primary use from roughly 6,600 acres to 608. A second reading and possible final vote is scheduled for Oct. 20. If the council adopts it and the mayor signs, the ordinance takes effect 30 days later. Hillsboro's temporary moratorium on new data center proposals runs until Nov. 24, which means the new code would land almost exactly as the pause lifts.

The 608 acres is not one block. It is a 215-acre cap in the Industrial Park zone, a 310-acre cap in the Industrial Sanctuary zone, and 83 acres in portions of the Jackson East area. Every proposed facility has to go through a public hearing. Accessory data centers, meaning compute space serving another business on the same site, are capped at the lesser of one quarter of the site's gross acreage or 30 percent of the primary business's gross floor area, and they cannot lease computing to outside customers. A 1,000-foot buffer from schools serving children under 18 applies to both primary and accessory facilities, and the council made that buffer temporary for 12 months pending study.

Oregon is tightening on two fronts at once. In order 26-154, issued May 7, the Oregon Public Utility Commission approved Schedule 96 for Portland General Electric, the first major implementation of the state's 2025 POWER Act. It covers data centers above 20 megawatts, requires minimum contracts starting at 10 years and reaching 30 years at 220 megawatts or more, sets minimum generation and transmission demand charges at 90 percent of contracted system capacity whether the load is used or not, requires the customer to pay 100 percent of needed distribution upgrades, and adds a 1-cent-per-kilowatt-hour surcharge above 100 megawatts.

For electrical contractors, this narrows where the work sits without necessarily shrinking it. Fewer eligible acres in Hillsboro means the remaining projects concentrate in the Industrial Sanctuary and Industrial Park zones, on ground already served by industrial-grade feeders, and each one arrives after a public hearing rather than an over-the-counter permit. Schedule 96 pushes substation, switchgear, and feeder upgrade cost onto the project itself rather than the rate base, which keeps that scope inside the construction contract. The 90 percent minimum demand charge gives owners a reason to energize and load the full build quickly, which front-loads commissioning, metering, and protective relay work instead of letting it trail the job.

Oregon licenses electricians at the state level through the Building Codes Division, and the retrofit and accessory work this code pushes toward runs through the supervising licenses. The limited supervising electrician credential requires a current Oregon limited journeyman manufacturing plant electrician license plus 8,000 additional hours of plant journeyman experience, a four-hour 64-question open-book exam, and a $100 application fee. Licenses renew every three years on Oct. 1 and carry 24 continuing education hours. Only that license holder may direct, supervise, or control electrical installation, maintenance, and repair in an existing operable plant, hospital, commercial building, or institution.

Salem paused all data center development in September until Jan. 19. The Oct. 20 vote decides how much of Hillsboro stays open.