Northwest Power Council Draft Plan Seeks 11 GW of New Generation and 5.2 GW of Storage by 2032
- Capacity & Wholesale Markets Policy & Markets Regulatory
Marin Holt
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- 7 minutes read
- New generation by 2032: 11 GW
- Battery storage by 2032: 5.2 GW
- Portfolio fixed cost: $2.3 billion in 2032
- Data center demand by 2030: 4 GW
- Comment deadline: October 16, 2026
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council voted on August 12 to release a draft Ninth Northwest Regional Power Plan for public comment. It asks Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana to add roughly 11 GW of new generation and 5.2 GW of battery storage by 2032. The portfolio splits the generation into about 9 GW of wind and solar and about 2.1 GW of natural gas. The Council puts the fixed cost of that build at $2.3 billion in 2032, which it frames as 0.15% of the four-state region’s $1.46 trillion gross domestic product in 2025. Public comment runs through October 16, 2026, and the Council expects to adopt a final plan late this year or in early 2027.
The Council names data centers as the largest near-term driver, at roughly 4 GW of added demand by 2030. Electric vehicles and building electrification supply the rest. Regional load could rise about 50% within six years on the draft’s higher trajectory and nearly double over twenty years.
What the portfolio actually commits to
The gas is not spread evenly. The draft proposes no new gas plants in Oregon and only limited development in Washington, while about 2,100 MW of the new gas capacity lands in Idaho and Montana. That places the firm capacity in the two states with the weakest emissions constraints and leaves the coastal states dependent on transfers when wind and solar underperform.
The plan also proposes energy-efficiency standards for new data centers, which would be an unusual move for a body that writes advisory resource plans rather than binding rules. Jennifer Light, the Council’s power planning director, framed the portfolio as deliberately mixed. “The Northwest’s power system will rely on a diverse mix of resources in the next 5-10 years,” she said. “No single resource on its own will be able to meet our growing need for energy in the future.”
Why It Matters
The Council’s plan is advisory. It binds the Bonneville Power Administration, and it steers state regulators, but it does not order a single utility to build anything. Its real weight sits in what comes next. Portland General Electric, Puget Sound Energy, Idaho Power and Avista all cite Council forecasts when they defend procurement before their commissions. Developers reading the 5.2 GW storage figure should treat it as a demand signal for the 2028 to 2032 window, not a procurement order.
The 0.15%-of-GDP framing deserves a closer look. Fixed cost is not the number that lands on a bill. It excludes fuel, transmission upgrades and the capacity payments that follow when a 4 GW data center block shows up faster than the generation does. Comments are due October 16, and the interesting fight will be over who pays for the gap between the plan’s high and low load cases.
Critical Perspective
The draft asks four states for 5.2 GW of storage and about 11 GW of generation inside seven years, and it orders none of it. PJM accepted 715 projects and 201.5 GW of nameplate capacity into the first cycle of its reformed queue this month, which is a reminder that a large capacity number describes intent and not steel in the ground. Illinois had to write its 3 GW storage target into the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, signed in January 2026, to move a smaller number than this one, and that was a procurement mandate rather than a forecast. If Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana adopt the portfolio without a mandate behind it, what stops the 5.2 GW from queuing the way PJM’s 201.5 GW is queuing?
