PacifiCorp is an
electric power company in the western
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
PacifiCorp has two business units:
# Pacific Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory throughout Oregon, northern California, and southeastern Washington.
# Rocky Mountain Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory throughout
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
,
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...
, and southeastern Idaho.
PacifiCorp operates one of the largest privately held transmission systems in the U.S. within the western Energy Imbalance Market.
Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power combined serve over 1.6 million residential customers, 202,000 commercial customers, and 37,000 industrial and irrigation customers - for a total of approximately 1,813,000 customers. The service area is . The company owns and maintain of long distance transmission lines, of distribution lines, and 900 substations.
History
Pacific Power & Light was formed in 1910 from the merger of several financially troubled utilities in Oregon and Washington to form the Pacific Power & Light Company. It gradually expanded its reach to include most of Oregon, as well as portions of California, Washington and Wyoming. In 1984, it reorganized itself as a holding company, PacifiCorp, headquartered in Portland with Pacific Power as its main subsidiary.
Utah Power and Light (UP&L) was organized on 6 September 1912 from the merger of four electric companies in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming and was a
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...
subsidiary of a large holding company,
Electric Bond and Share Company (EBASCO) of New York. Within four years of its organization, UP&L had purchased twenty-seven other electric companies in the general Utah area, and eventually absorbed more than one hundred thirty. In 1881, one of those companies had made Salt Lake City the fifth city in the world with
central station
Central stations or central railway stations emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as railway stations that had initially been built on the edge of city centres were enveloped by urban expansion and became an integral part of the ...
electricity.
In 1954, Pacific Power & Light merged with the Mountain States Power Company, essentially doubling the company's service area. In 1961, the company purchased the California Oregon Power Company, extending its service into southern Oregon and northern California.
In 1977, PacifiCorp spun off its coal mining interests into a mining company known as
NERCO, which was eventually listed on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
and ranked as high as 353 on the
Fortune 500 list of the largest American companies. Through its majority interest in NERCO, PacifiCorp was involved in the
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...
of coal, oil, natural gas, gold, silver, and uranium. PacifiCorp still owned 82% of NERCO in 1993, when it was acquired by the mining giant
Rio Tinto Group.
In 1987, PacifiCorp acquired Utah Power & Light. After the merger with regulator approval on January 9, 1989, Pacific Power and Utah Power operated as divisions of PacifiCorp.
In 2001, PacifiCorp was purchased by
Scottish Power
Scottish Power is a vertically integrated energy company based in Glasgow, Scotland. It is a subsidiary of Spanish utility firm Iberdrola.
ScottishPower is the distribution network operator for Central and Southern Scotland, Merseyside, Nor ...
. Since 2006, PacifiCorp has been a wholly owned subsidiary of
Berkshire Hathaway Energy
Berkshire Hathaway Energy (previously known as MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company until 2014) is a holding company that is 92% owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire has owned a controlling stake since 1999. The company also controls power dist ...
(formerly MidAmerican), itself an affiliate of
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from ...
.
In a July 2006 reorganization, Pacific Power's territory in central and eastern Wyoming was merged with the Utah Power territory to form Rocky Mountain Power.
In September 2021, PacifiCorp presented a plan to keep 3 out of 22
coal power plant
A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...
s operational beyond 2040 and to source 56% of its yearly consumption with
renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
by 2040.
Operations
PacifiCorp owns, maintains and operates generation assets and manages the commercial and trading operations of the company. PacifiCorp owns 68 generating plants with a capacity of 9,140 megawatts. 70.6% of the generation is from thermal sources (i.e., coal or natural gas), 6.7% from hydroelectric sources, and 0.2% from renewable sources. 22.5% of PacifiCorp's generation is purchased from other suppliers or under contracts.
Generation resources
In these tables of generation properties owned or partially-owned by PacifiCorp, total capacity is 10,556MW. Of this, 56% is coal, 24% is natural gas, 10% is hydroelectric, and 10% is renewable.
Major generation facilities include:
Thermal generation (Fossil Fueled)
Hydroelectric Generation
Renewable generation
Coal mining
PacifiCorp also owns and operates several captive coal mines located at or very near some of its generation plants. In Wyoming, PacifiCorp operates and has partial interest in Jim Bridger Mine and owns the Dave Johnston Mine, which is in final reclamation. The company also owned and operated the Deer Creek Mine in Utah, near the Huntington Plant but closed it in 2015 and has a partial interest in the Trapper Mine in Colorado.
Electric vehicles
Calling it a "new era of utility involvement in transportation electrification," the ''Portland Business Journal'' in 2018 described PacifiCorp's electric vehicle promotion program as a plan that promises new electric vehicle charging sites, outreach and education efforts. The program was spawn from legislation passed in 2016 that called for more renewable energy from the state's utility companies.
Customers
As of May 1, 2007, Rocky Mountain Power serves approximately 758,000 customers in Utah, 129,000 customers in Idaho, and 67,000 customers in Wyoming.
Net metering
In November 2017, Rocky Mountain Power made a deal with the state's utility authorities to phase out
net metering
Net metering (or net energy metering, NEM) is an electricity billing mechanism that allows consumers who generate some or all of their own electricity to use that electricity anytime, instead of when it is generated. This is particularly importa ...
. The program was paying customers who generated their own electricity with rooftop solar panels the residential rate for their excess energy that got sent back into the energy grid. As of August 2018, new rooftop solar installations were down 23 percent, likely due to the cancellation of the net metering program. New solar customers are paid by a transitional program that pays slightly less than the residential rate until 2033. People who installed solar panels prior to November 2017 are grandfathered at the previous rates until 2035.
Organization
PacifiCorp is currently headquartered in the
Lloyd Center Tower
The Lloyd Center Tower is an 88-meter (290 foot) tall office tower in the Lloyd District of Portland, Oregon. At 20 stories, it is the tallest building in Oregon East of the Willamette River.
It was designed by John Graham & Associates and ...
at 825 N.E. Multnomah Street,
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
, in the Lloyd District. Pacific Power is also headquartered in the same building. Rocky Mountain Power is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Pacific Power
Pacific Power serves customers in
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
,
Oregon
Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
and
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. Major cities served include:
*California
**
Crescent City
**
Dunsmuir
**
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta ( Shasta: ''Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki''; Karuk: ''Úytaahkoo'') is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. At an elevation of , it is the second-highest peak in the Cascades ...
**
Yreka
Yreka ( ) is the county seat of Siskiyou County, California, United States, near the Shasta River; the city has an area of about , most of it land. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 7,807, reflecting a meager increase fro ...
*Oregon
**
Albany
**
Astoria
**
Bend
**
Coos Bay
Coos Bay is an estuary where the Coos River enters the Pacific Ocean, the estuary is approximately 12 miles long and up to two miles wide. It is the largest estuary completely within Oregon state lines. The Coos Bay watershed covers an area of abou ...
**
Corvallis
**
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
**
Grants Pass
Grants Pass is the county seat of Josephine County, Oregon, United States. The city is located on Interstate 5 in Oregon, Interstate 5, northwest of Medford, Oregon, Medford, along the Rogue River (Oregon), Rogue River. The population was 39,189 ...
**
Hermiston
**
Hood River
**
Independence
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
**
Junction City
**
Klamath Falls
Klamath Falls ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Klamath County, Oregon, United States. The city was originally called ''Linkville'' when George Nurse founded the town in 1867. It was named after the Link River, on whose falls the city was ...
**
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...
**
Lincoln City
**
Medford
**
North Bend
**
Pendleton
**
Portland
Portland most commonly refers to:
* Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States
* Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...
(parts of downtown, northern and eastern Portland; the rest of city is served by
Portland General Electric
Portland General Electric (PGE) is a Fortune 1000 public utility based in Portland, Oregon. It distributes electricity to customers in parts of Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill, Washington, and Polk counties - 44% of the inhabitants ...
.)
**
Prineville
Prineville is a city in and the seat of Crook County, Oregon, United States. It was named for the first merchant located in the present location, Barney Prine. The population was 9,253 at the 2010 census.
History
Prineville was founded in 187 ...
**
Redmond
**
Roseburg
**
Stayton
Stayton is a city in Marion County, Oregon, United States, located southeast of the state capital, Salem, on Oregon Route 22. It is south of Sublimity and east of Aumsville. Located on the North Santiam River, Stayton is a regional agricultu ...
**
Sweet Home Sweet Home or Sweethome may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Sweet Home, Arkansas
* Sweet Home Central School District in Amherst and Tonawanda, New York
** Sweet Home High School (Amherst, New York), a New York State public high school
* ...
*Washington
**
Walla Walla Walla Walla can refer to:
* Walla Walla people, a Native American tribe after which the county and city of Walla Walla, Washington, are named
* Place of many rocks in the Australian Aboriginal Wiradjuri language, the origin of the name of the town ...
**
Yakima
Yakima ( or ) is a city in and the county seat of Yakima County, Washington, and the state's 11th-largest city by population. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 96,968 and a metropolitan population of 256,728. The uninco ...
As of December 31, 2009, Pacific Power serves 555,070 customers in Oregon, 126,665 customers in Washington, and 45,148 customers in California.
Rocky Mountain Power
Rocky Mountain Power serves customers in Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming.
Major cities served include:
Idaho
Ammon,
Lava Hot Springs,
Malad City,
Montpelier,
Preston,
Rigby,
Rexburg,
Saint Anthony,
Shelley
Utah
Rocky Mountain Power serves most major cities in Utah, with the following exceptions:
Bountiful,
Kaysville,
Lehi,
Logan,
Provo,
Murray,
Monroe,
Monticello,
Springville,
St. George
Wyoming
Buffalo,
Casper,
Cody,
Douglas,
Evanston,
Green River,
Kemmerer,
Lander,
Laramie,
Rawlins,
Riverton,
Rock Springs,
Thermopolis
References and sources
External links
Pacificorp home pagePacific Power home pageRocky Mountain Power home pageBerkshire Hathaway Energy home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pacificorp
Berkshire Hathaway
Companies based in Portland, Oregon
Energy in Oregon
Superfund sites in Utah
Economy of the Northwestern United States
Electric power companies of the United States
Hydroelectric power companies of the United States
1984 establishments in Oregon