The leaders of Portland General Electric Co. have lifted their long-term expectations for load growth and beefed up their capital spending plans through the middle of this decade.
Speaking to analysts and investors after reporting PGE’s fourth-quarter results last week, President and CEO Maria Pope and CFO Jim Ajello echoed many of their peers in other growth regions of the country by saying that the post-COVID economic recovery produced strong load growth in 2021. Overall, weather-adjusted demand rose 4%, with load from residential customers rising 1% while demand from commercial and industrial customers grew 4.2% and 8.5%, respectively.
Those numbers and the prospects of more steady in the company’s service area, which is home to about 2 million people, have led PGE’s executives to take up their long-term growth guidance to 1.5% per year from 1%. The company last year delivered nearly 25.3MWh to customers.
The guidance provided by Pope and Ajello adds to the positive long-term outlook they provided in November. At that time, the duo also lifted PGE’s 2022 capital spending forecast to $665 million from $550 million – the company actually ended up topping that guidance by $25 million – and Pope and Ajello now have put in place similar updates to upcoming years: Instead of forecasting $550 million of spending annually from 2023 to 2025, $385 million of it targeting transmission and distribution, they now expect to put to work $650 million in each of those years as well as in 2026.
Those plans break down as follows: T&D projects will now receive $430 million each year while generation is being allocated $120 million and general business and technology work is in line for $100 million annually. (The dollar figures exclude possible spending from a request for proposal PGE issued last fall asking for up to 500 MW of renewable energy and another 375 MW of non-emitting capacity.)
“We are advancing our use of technology and digital capabilities, accelerating our procurement of renewable resources, and deploying infrastructure to advance a smarter grid,” Pope said in a statement. “We are seizing opportunities arising from the national momentum to address climate change and look forward to working with stakeholders and the communities we serve to create a stronger, sustainable and more resilient future for Oregon.”
For the fourth quarter, PGE posted a net profit of $66 million versus $52 million in the last three months of 2020. For all of 2021, the company earned $244 million on $2.4 billion in revenues, numbers that were up 57% and 12%, respectively, from the year before.
Shares of PGE (Ticker: POR) closed trading last week at $49.74, down 3% from the previous Friday. The company’s market capitalization is about $4.4 billion.
