Virginia senator pushes bill to make data centers cover costs as electric bills soar

Virginia's booming data center industry has helped make the state a digital powerhouse — but it may also be contributing to higher household power bills.

With electricity prices rising, Sen. Mark Warner is supporting legislation to keep more of those costs from falling on Virginians.

What's happening?

ARLnow reported that Warner is co-sponsoring the Power for the People Act, a bill intended to address reliability concerns and higher costs associated with the massive electricity needs of data centers. The proposal would add oversight for local electricity infrastructure, have states examine separate rate classes for data centers, and seek a new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rule.

The idea is to place the cost of grid upgrades and other expansion-related expenses on data centers themselves rather than shifting those charges to residents and smaller customers.

More than 600 data centers are located in Virginia, including the large Loudoun County cluster known as "data center alley."

According to ARLnow, citing Visual Capitalist, electricity prices in Virginia climbed 14.5% over the last year. ARLnow also reported that Dominion Energy put new rate increases in place in 2026 after receiving approval from the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Why does this matter?

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, as reported by ARLnow, families on the PJM grid (most of the Mid-Atlantic region, including Virginia) could see about $70 added to their monthly electric bills on average, as data center growth continues.

Residential customers generally have little control over whether major energy-hungry facilities are built nearby, yet they can still end up sharing the costs of the transmission lines, substations, and other upgrades needed to serve them.

What's being done?

ARLnow reported that the bill would push states to weigh data-center-specific rate classes and would seek a FERC rule requiring data centers to pay for infrastructure upgrades that would not otherwise be needed.

Dominion Energy has also stated that it plans to create a separate rate class in 2027 for very large power users, including data centers.

Warner framed the issue in blunt terms: "Virginia is the data center capital of the world, and new data center proposals are popping up all the time across the Commonwealth."

He added, "If corporations are going to run data centers in Virginia, they should cover the cost of them."

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