Portland General Electric : A letter from Maria Pope, president and CEO

En Español

Dear Oregon,

In January, we reflect on the successes and challenges of the past year and look to opportunities in the year to come. As we enter 2023, Portland General Electric's commitment to a clean energy future and our dedication to customers and the community remains steadfast.

Our journey to decarbonization - an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - will not be easy. With the support and participation of customers, communities, public officials and businesses, we are already well on our way. We are committed to making the critical investments needed to maintain reliability, increase resiliency, and give customers tools to manage energy costs.

Here are some of our key achievements from the past year:

• Outage reduction and restoration times: 2022 ended with another challenging series of winter storms. While we know any amount of time without power is a burden, due to upgrades and investments made throughout the year, we mitigated additional weather-related outages and improve restoration times, avoiding over 1.3 million minutes of customer interruptions compared to 2021. Key advancements that helped us accomplish this include:

  • The capabilities of our Integrated Operations Center, with its Advanced Distribution Management System, to provide state-of-the-art insights and prevent outages before they happen.

  • Installation of over 50 new weather stations as a tool to predict and prepare for challenging conditions.

  • Investments in innovative technology, including cameras that use artificial intelligence to help detect wildfires and other issues across our service area.

• Clean energy commitment: Together with the communities we serve, we made progress toward state and national clean energy goals:

  • Demolished the Boardman coal plant, Oregon's only remaining coal facility.

  • Brought online the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, the first facility in North America to co-locate wind and solar generation with battery storage, providing enough emissions-free energy to power about 100,000 homes.

  • Announced the Clearwater Wind Project, providing emissions-free power for 125,000 homes.

Our priorities for 2023 continue along this path of reliable and clean energy delivery. You can expect us to:

• Make investments that deliver long-term benefits, including:

  • Resiliency and technology upgrades to support reliable energy and increased vehicle electrification, rooftop solar and home battery storage.

  • Purchase and construction of clean generation facilities (such as wind turbines and solar farms) that help us meet clean energy mandates and growing customer demand.

  • Large-scale battery storage to match with intermittent clean energy resources and increase reliability.

  • Major storm and wildfire prevention investments, including dealing with hazardous trees, burying lines underground and other outage mitigation work.

• Manage customer prices in the midst of inflation and rising supply costs:

  • Enhance programs that help customers manage their own energy usage, including smart thermostats for homes and businesses and Peak Time Rebates.

  • Keep our own business expenses low through continued focused cost management.

  • Aggressively pursue federal funds and tax credits through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

  • Promote energy efficiency programs available through the Energy Trust of Oregon, the Portland Clean Energy Fund and other programs.

  • Continue expanding our new income-qualified bill discount program.

On behalf of everyone at PGE, it is a privilege to provide the electric service that powers your lives. We are excited, every day, to be your partner in creating a safe, reliable, clean energy future for all of us.

Maria Pope

President and CEO, Portland General Electric