The Real Story – A Column
I am totally immersed in every land sale, every movement of equipment, and every whisper in North Hillsboro’s massive industrial buildout. All of that in a City where information is locked down, public notices barely exist, and NDAs and secrecy rule the day. The highest stakes and biggest piles of money in the State are playing out in Hillsboro, Oregon, as Data Centers, Energy deals, and land speculators fight it out. A social media post last Friday just intersected with all of the other information that has been coming in. The puzzle is coming together.
While the public was told that the “Grand Bargain” of 2014 was a 50-year promise, the City of Hillsboro has quietly spent between $150 and $170 Million in taxpayer-backed TIF (Tax Increment Financing) funds to amass a 300-acre industrial superpower site along NW Meek Road. But land is nothing without power—and the Hillsboro Herald has uncovered a major missing piece of the puzzle; we think.
Enter “Big Meeks.” Proposed by NextEra Energy Resources, the “Big Meeks Energy Storage” project is a behemoth lithium-ion battery facility, a BESS rated at 400 Megawatts. It is being promoted as a massive $500 million dollar battery energy storage facility proposed by NextEra Energy Resources.
400 MegaWatts, is that a lot of power?
To understand that number, you have to look at Intel. Intel’s entire Ronler Acres campus draws roughly 400-600 MW. NextEra isn’t proposing a “neighborhood battery”; they are proposing a specialized energy hub that could power a second Intel-sized empire.
Here is an aerial photo of the approximate proposed Big Meeks site on NW Meek Road, directly across High 26 from the Rice Museum. This is an approximate land area with a generated image showing BESS Lithium-Ion batteries, each about the size of a semi-truck. This is about how many Batteries would be needed to produce 400 megawatts. Hillsboro Herald Image– not supplied by the developer or any official body- approximation onlyThe Speculation: Semiconductor Fab or AI Factory?
The location of Big Meeks inside the Industrial UGB—directly adjacent to the City’s 300-acre land assembly and flanked by another 180 acres, making an almost 500-acre development ready tech site—suggests two likely scenarios:
The Semiconductor “Whale”: A 400 MW battery is the “insurance policy” required by a high-end semiconductor manufacturer (an IDM) to prevent “wafer loss” during grid fluctuations. Needed where the grid is almost maxed out, which ours now is. Or…The AI “Factory”: NextEra’s 2026 corporate strategy explicitly targets “AI Data Center Hubs.” These facilities require massive, instantaneous power draws that would crash a standard grid. Big Meeks acts as the “buffer,” allowing a massive AI campus to sit on the City’s 300 acres without turning off the lights in the rest of Hillsboro.
The “Squeeze”: As the City pays massive interest on the $150M+ debt for the land it bought, Senator Janeen Sollman is pushing SB 1586 to ensure that once this 300-acre block is “filled,” the 1,700-acre rural reserve to the west is legally unlocked for the next wave.
The “Big Meeks” battery may be the bridge between the land Hillsboro already bought and the farmland they are about to try to take. And guess what? Public records we searched indicate that NextEra is owned and controlled partly by- you guessed it- BlackRock and their private equity pals! (sources linked at the bottom)
NextEraResources-
ShareholderOwnership %Approx. SharesNoteThe Vanguard Group10.37%~216 MillionThe single largest shareholder is also a top owner of PGE.BlackRock, Inc.8.21%~170 MillionThe primary driver of ESG/Data Center capital worldwide.State Street Corp.5.49%~114 MillionManages the “Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund” (XLU).
WE REALLY NEED TO WAKE UP FOLKS – AND OUR LEADERS BETTER LEARN WHAT IS HAPPENING- AND BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THEY DO NOT KNOW-
The Institutional Grip on Oregon’s Energy Utilities
(As of February 2026 reporting)
Utility CompanyVanguard (%)BlackRock (%)State Street (%)Combined BlockNoteNextEra Energy 10.37%8.21%5.49%24.07%Developer of Big Meeks (400 MW BESS)NW Natural Gas11.47%16.06%4.88%32.41%Major donor to the Natural Gas PACPGE11.12%13.52%4.06%28.70%Owner of the Constable BESS and the entire gridPacifiCorp11.24%*8.35%*5.30%*24.89%*Owned via Berkshire Hathaway
We are now under the control of Private Equity Fimrs including our Power and Gas Bills – Let That Sink In
And according to public records, NextEra Energy, Inc, PAC has been funding and sponsoring organizations and political interests with ties to the Hillsboro land expansions we have been writing about. More on this soon, but let’s have no doubts, and I keep saying it, our power grid and valley is being sold out to and taken over by Private Equity firms who see our land, water, and energy as a complete gold rush!
We have covered other BESS battery installations that have quietly been placed in Hillsboro over the last year. And we have covered how horribly dangerous these facilitites are and can be, and how their economics are not to make our invidual power rates better- rather the power is bougth cheap from PGE and sold high to Data Centers and big users at a max profit.
Closing thoughts- It seems Hillsboro has something up its sleeve. This 400 MW BESS Battery could be a one-off, and it may just send power back onto the grid for nearby data centers. But other tidbits have come my way that have me believing that an AI facility or some other user may be about to enter the story- and this BIG MEEK Battery project has our radar way up!
BONUS CONTENT:
Hillsboro’s Lithium Ion BESS Battery Boom Is Happening in the Quiet — and That’s the Problem
The Updated Hillsboro BESS Comparison – We Are Now Battery CityProject NamePower (MW)Total Storage (MWh)Status / LocationPGE Constable75 MW300 MWhOperational (Hillsboro)Jupiter (Blackberry Grove)100 MW400 MWhApproved (West Union Rd)Chickadee BESS100 MW400 MWhIn Review (Near Helvetia Market)Big Meeks (NextEra)400 MW1,600 MWhProposed (North Hillsboro)Check Out Our Map- What has Hillsboro Been Buying?
Sources:
NextEra Energy (NEE) Institutional Ownership 2026 – MarketBeat
Ownership. Analyst Forecasts. Insider Trades. Ownership. SEC Filings. Short Interest. Institutional Ownership Changes (13F Filings) for NextEra Energy …
NextEra Energy Latest Ownership Pattern – Insider, Institutional, Mutual Fund shareholdings
No of Institutions holding shares. Created with Highcharts 7.2.2 Values 22 3,126 Total count Insider Data Fund Company Data Mutual Fund Data 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k. …
NEE – NextEra Energy, Inc. Stock – Stock Price, Institutional Ownership, Shareholders (NYSE) – Fintel
# Important NoteFile Date | Source | Investor— | — | —2026-02-02 | 13F | Addison Capital Co2026-02-02 | 13F | Danske Bank A/s2026-02-02 | 13F | E
BESs Batteries Aer Taking Over Hillsboro, Oregon in 2026 – Generated Content for Comparison