Utah Commercial Electricity: Navigating Rocky Mountain Power Rates
Utah's regulated market is dominated by Rocky Mountain Power (PacifiCorp/Berkshire Hathaway). In 2026, Silicon Slopes tech firms and data centers face rising base rates as the utility accelerates coal plant retirements under Energy Vision 2030. With no competitive supply choice, commercial cost control depends on demand charge management and behind-the-meter optimization.
Executive Impact
- →The Legacy Coal Transition: Utah depends heavily on massive, aging coal plants (Hunter and Huntington). As Rocky Mountain Power accelerates their retirement dates, the un-depreciated balances of those facilities are recovered from ratepayers, even while they concurrently pay for the new solar and wind farms built to replace them.
- →The Energy Balancing Account (EBA): Rocky Mountain Power utilizes an EBA to pass through volatile net power cost deviations (such as wholesale market purchases during Western heatwaves or spikes in natural gas fuel costs) directly to commercial invoices, making strict budget forecasting difficult.
- →Load Growth vs. Grid Capacity: Tech migration into Utah has outpaced high-voltage transmission development. This strain forces Rocky Mountain Power into expensive infrastructure upgrades (substations, lines), the costs of which are socialized across all commercial rate classes.
Strategic Mitigation in the PacifiCorp Footprint
With competitive retail shopping off the table, Utah facility managers must prioritize physical demand reduction and highly specialized tariff manipulation.
- Tariff Migration & Peak Demand Penalties: Rocky Mountain Power heavily penalize commercial operations that spike their kw demand, especially during summer afternoons (Schedule 6 vs Schedule 8). Auditing your facility's operational profile and intentionally shifting massive start-up loads to off-peak hours can slash monthly bills, even if total kWh consumption remains identical.
- Interruptible and Curtailable Load: As western grids tighten during summer heat domes, pacifiCorp places immense value on load flexibility. Large industrial and data center operators that agree to drop load temporarily during grid emergencies (via standby diesel generation or battery deployment) can secure massively discounted delivery tariffs that save millions annually.
- Regulatory Intervention via the UAE: The only defense against structural rate hikes is unified legal action at the Public Service Commission of Utah (PSCU). Forming coalitions—often via groups like the Utah Association of Energy Users (UAE)—is mandatory to challenge Rocky Mountain Power's Return on Equity (ROE) assumptions and limit exactly how much of the grid transition is shouldered by the commercial sector.
The Schedule 32 "Green Tariff" Solution
To satisfy the rigorous 100% renewable energy mandates of incoming tech giants (Apple, Facebook/Meta), Utah regulators approved "Schedule 32." This allows massive commercial users to contract directly with independent renewable developers for new wind or solar projects, using Rocky Mountain Power purely for transmission/delivery. While administratively complex, it bypasses the standard generation mix and provides long-term, fixed-price budget certainty.