Cheap, clean hydro and a proven hub. It sits just below the top tier because the BPA connection queue is tightening: the fundamentals are excellent, but the path to actually connect is getting harder.
See live grid data →Why: BPA is federally administered and outside FERC's Section 206 orders; it has paused its long-term queue under a Grid Access Transformation Project and is weighing readiness requirements and a 13 MW large-load threshold. Transmission is available except in data-centre pockets like central Oregon and the Portland metro, where about 18 GW of BPA's 24 GW load request is data centres.
What would change the read: The Grid Access Transformation reform reopening a clear queue with firm connection dates for large loads.
Access is tightening: the BPA interconnection queue is lengthening as demand surges.
High availability: abundant, firm hydro across the Northwest.
Cheap power: among the lowest US wholesale costs.
Proven momentum: long-established hyperscale clusters (central Washington, Oregon).
Clean grid (~70 g), hydro-led.
A dayslong cold snap over Martin Luther King weekend in January 2024 brought the region dangerously close to rolling outages.
What this means: A large new load faces occasional exposure here. Monitor conditions and keep a contingency plan.
event-based
Average customer interruption (SAIDI) of 152.68 minutes per year in 2024, excluding major event days as filed.
The market figure above is an average across these territories. A project sits in one of them, not in the average. Each row is that operator’s own filed record; once a candidate site is matched to a territory, that row is the evidence that applies to it.
| Territory operator | SAIDI min/yr | Customers | Major-event method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Puget Sound Energy Inc (WA) | 203.0 | 1,240,043 | IEEE 1366 |
| Portland General Electric Co (OR) | 133.0 | 942,296 | IEEE 1366 |
| PacifiCorp (OR) | 107.57 | 638,000 | IEEE 1366 |
| Idaho Power Co (ID) | 164.01 | 621,746 | IEEE 1366 |
| City of Seattle - (WA) (WA) | 110.8 | 537,470 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Snohomish County (WA) | 181.4 | 386,741 | IEEE 1366 |
| Avista Corp (WA) | 112.0 | 270,134 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Clark County - (WA) (WA) | 59.0 | 233,669 | IEEE 1366 |
| City of Tacoma - (WA) (WA) | 80.45 | 179,969 | IEEE 1366 |
| Avista Corp (ID) | 165.0 | 145,203 | IEEE 1366 |
| PacifiCorp (WA) | 101.99 | 138,254 | IEEE 1366 |
| City of Eugene - (OR) (OR) | 65.26 | 102,048 | IEEE 1366 |
| PacifiCorp (ID) | 129.44 | 89,035 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Benton County (WA) | 39.5 | 56,863 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Cowlitz County (WA) | 125.6 | 54,257 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Chelan County (WA) | 95.23 | 51,143 | IEEE 1366 |
| Inland Power & Light Company (WA) | 278.0 | 48,046 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Grays Harbor County (WA) | 202.0 | 45,710 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 3 of Mason County (WA) | 269.34 | 36,547 | own method |
| PUD No 1 of Lewis County (WA) | 604.74 | 35,583 | IEEE 1366 |
| Peninsula Light Company (WA) | 136.07 | 35,518 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Franklin County (WA) | 55.4 | 35,015 | own method |
| Kootenai Electric Cooperative (ID) | 125.04 | 34,499 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Clallam County (WA) | 213.1 | 33,769 | own method |
| City of Springfield - (OR) (OR) | 11.61 | 33,147 | IEEE 1366 |
| City of Idaho Falls - (ID) (ID) | 72.4 | 32,782 | IEEE 1366 |
| Oregon Trail El Cons Coop, Inc (OR) | 142.15 | 31,823 | own method |
| City of Richland - (WA) (WA) | 94.0 | 27,563 | IEEE 1366 |
| Consumers Power, Inc (OR) | 354.1 | 23,819 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Okanogan County (WA) | 110.1 | 22,175 | own method |
| Midstate Electric Coop, Inc (OR) | 369.0 | 21,517 | own method |
| PUD No 1 of Jefferson County (WA) | 424.0 | 21,166 | IEEE 1366 |
| Columbia River Peoples Ut Dist (OR) | 54.54 | 20,817 | IEEE 1366 |
| Salem Electric - (OR) (OR) | 19.66 | 20,556 | own method |
| Idaho Power Co (OR) | 434.79 | 20,146 | IEEE 1366 |
| Northern Lights, Inc (ID) | 1219.7 | 19,609 | own method |
| Umatilla Electric Coop Assn (OR) | 99.06 | 19,473 | IEEE 1366 |
| Coos-Curry Electric Coop, Inc (OR) | 181.3 | 18,713 | IEEE 1366 |
| Fall River Rural Elec Coop Inc (ID) | 6.78 | 18,225 | IEEE 1366 |
| Benton Rural Electric Assn (WA) | 156.01 | 16,453 | IEEE 1366 |
| Orcas Power & Light Coop (WA) | 212.5 | 15,251 | IEEE 1366 |
| PUD No 1 of Klickitat County (WA) | 384.0 | 14,254 | own method |
| Lane Electric Coop Inc (OR) | 826.4 | 13,468 | own method |
| City of Centralia - (WA) (WA) | 55.66 | 10,745 | IEEE 1366 |
| Northern Wasco County PUD (OR) | 34.84 | 10,490 | IEEE 1366 |
| Big Bend Electric Coop, Inc (WA) | 191.77 | 9,477 | IEEE 1366 |
| United Electric Co-op, Inc - (ID) (ID) | 40.33 | 7,513 | IEEE 1366 |
| Columbia Rural Elec Assn, Inc (WA) | 213.9 | 6,507 | IEEE 1366 |
| Clatskanie Peoples Util Dist (OR) | 517.86 | 4,777 | IEEE 1366 |
| Salmon River Electric Coop Inc (ID) | 198.88 | 3,056 | IEEE 1366 |
| Northern Lights, Inc (WA) | 0.89 | 14 | own method |
Filed to EIA Form 861 for 2024, excluding major event days. Territory-wide averages: see the layer note above for what they do not establish.
The Northwest holds most US hydro capacity, so a dry hydro year combined with an extended cold snap is the region's rolling-blackout risk; BPA has warned of a widening resource gap and took large drought-driven revenue losses.
What this means: A large new load should expect genuine exposure to forced power cuts (curtailment), price spikes, and delays in getting connected, and should design in backup power or firm supply contracts.
assessed · PNW energy-shortage risk in extreme conditions (Spokesman) · Drought cuts PNW hydropower (EIA)
We have not compiled what firm service actually promises here: whether it is firm, non-firm or interruptible, the conditions under which you can be curtailed, the redundancy required of you, and the transfer time behind any N-1 commitment. Treat this as an open diligence item, not as an indication that service is firm.
Utility feeds, UPS, storage, on-site generation, islanding, black start and the residual energy you still expect to lose are properties of a specific site design, not of a market. This layer only exists once there is a site, and we never assert it for you.
What this means: The supply picture looks likely to tighten; a new load should lock firm supply early and expect competition for capacity.
The average customer loses about 152.68 minutes of power per year (2024). This is the standard regulator outage measure (SAIDI); lower means a more reliable grid.
Averaged across 51 territories. No single customer experiences this figure. The per-territory table in the reliability overlay above gives each operator’s own filed record, which is what a site-specific read needs.
130 GW
55 months
The full queue analysis for this market, which covers the share of projects that give up and leave the queue (the withdrawal rate), how much of the queue is data centers, and the sources, is available through /api/v1/queue/pacific-northwest with a paid key. These are generation and storage queue figures: they show interconnection-system congestion, not a typical large-load connection wait.
Withdrawn (#305). The published band was derived from the Bonneville Power Administration priority-firm rate, which a new large load cannot obtain: federal hydro allocations are largely committed and a new customer would pay a market premium above the federal rate. A tariff the standard archetype cannot purchase may not set a delivered-cost band.
No delivered-cost band is published for this market, and no substitute figure has been put in its place. Screening on recurring cost returns insufficient evidence for this market rather than a value we cannot defend.
Restored when: A delivered-cost band is rebuilt from a source a new 100 MW high-load-factor customer could actually contract, with a stated cost boundary, effective date, method and confidence, reconciled like every other published market. Withdrawn 2026-08-20.
Moderate
1 of 2 data layers measured
Substantial
2 of 3 dimensions: reliability, connection, cost
June 2026
per-layer vintages below
| Layer | Method | Vintage | Freshness | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PGIQ Rating opinion | opinion | June 2026 | Current | PGIQ methodology |
| Reliability | measured | 2024 | Fresh | EIA Form 861, Schedules 3B and 3C (annual electric power industry report) (two major-event methods, IEEE; respondent-defined, customer-weighted blend of 51 of 55 territories, 98% of customers, regional context only) |
| Interconnection queue | modelled | end-2025 (LBNL 2026) | Fresh | LBNL Queued Up 2026 |
Freshness reflects each layer's refresh cadence: reliability annual to three-yearly, capacity-auction and queue yearly, tariffs every year or two. The full cross-market freshness dashboard is at /data-quality.
Territories in this market, each with its own filed record: Puget Sound Energy Inc, Portland General Electric Co, PacifiCorp, Idaho Power Co, City of Seattle - (WA), PUD No 1 of Snohomish County, Avista Corp, PUD No 1 of Clark County - (WA). Which one serves a given site depends on where that site is.
How the connection process is organised: the applicable service and connection entities depend on the candidate location and the power pathway. We have not compiled the structure for this market; that is a gap in our wayfinding, not a fact about the market.
The real-world events that test our Tier 2 call for Pacific Northwest: 1 supports it. Each is dated and cited, so you can check the rating against what is actually happening on the ground.
Seattle City Council passed a one-year moratorium on siting data centres above 20 MVA (Jun 2026) pending a study of grid, land-use and ratepayer impacts.
Source: Seattle City Light ↗How Pacific Northwest's reliability-adjusted score and tier have moved, month by month. Part of your Analyst Desk.
Every field above carries its own source and freshness. Price, imports and exports are modelled in every market because no feed supplies them. Carbon intensity is derived from the fuel mix.
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