I have studied the programs states have launched to address the needs of these large electricity customers. Prices are set by state utility commissions, who determine which customers’ rates will increase by how much to pay for new investments in electricity infrastructure. It’s not simple.

Virginia’s State Corporation Commission ruled last Friday, July 1, that large data centers must pay for transmission infrastructure built solely to serve them — a cost previously funded by electricity customers. The ruling followed testimony from the Piedmont Environmental Council, which argued that Dominion Energy’s existing policies do not protect ratepayers from data center-related costs.

One of the less noticed features of the Virginia Way is the long-running tendency of the commonwealth’s leaders to conduct their decision-making behind closed doors. In this feature, we aim to highlight the frequency with which officials around Virginia are resisting public access to records on issues large and small — and note instances when the release of information under FOIA gave the public insight into how government bodies are operating.

The commonwealth now has a separate large-load rate class, a temporary electricity-consumption tax, and a governor pressing regulators to assign transmission expenses directly to the facilities that trigger them. Yet Virginia’s next challenge concerns implementation. Promises to protect households will carry little weight unless regulators translate them into durable, measurable obligations.

The move on Monday follows last month’s board meeting, where representatives from FirstEnergy and Rappahannock Electric Cooperative answered questions from residents about the proposed 138-kilovolt transmission line. Since then, county staff has created a dedicated webpage summarizing information about the project and addressing frequently asked questions raised by the public.

Sen. Russet Perry (D-31) and Del. John McAuliff (D-30) are asking to extend public comment timelines for two significant cases that will be appear before the State Corporation Commission—a merger request between Dominion and NextEra energy companies and a 260-mile, tri-state transmission line that is planned to cross through Loudoun.

At a joint regional meeting Wednesday, Frederick County officials provided representatives from the City of Winchester and Clarke County with updates regarding ongoing data center matters and its plan to fight the proposed Valley North transmission line project.

Two more data centers have been proposed for Goochland County, according to filings by Dominion Energy. One of the projects, a 1,200-megawatt campus, would require four new electric substations, according to testimony filed with Virginia regulators.

Virginia regulators have ordered Dominion Energy, the commonwealth’s largest utility, to create a process for assigning to data centers the direct costs of their electric service, such as substations built to meet their power demand. Those costs are currently spread across all ratepayers. Regulators also opened the door for data centers to pay more of the grid’s transmission costs further upstream, such as regional projects that are harder to tie to any specific demand source.

The residents of Boulder City, Nevada, are raging mad at the federal government. The Trump administration unilaterally approved a data center on a tract of public land within the city’s jurisdiction this summer without giving residents a say in the matter and without conducting an environmental assessment specific to the project.

Rapid swings in AI data centers' power demands are straining vital equipment, causing batteries, generators and cooling systems to malfunction or wear out far sooner than expected. The problems are also a potential source of wider instability in power grids that are already straining to keep the lights on.

Federal, state and city officials broke ground on the Jefferson Lab Data Center in June, which will become the home of a 30,000-square-foot High Performance Data Facility Hub. Federal entities such as the Department of Energy and NASA, along with universities and scientific institutions, will use the hub for scientific research for things like artificial intelligence and data analysis.

Alexandria City Council has joined a growing number of local residents asking Fairfax County to deny a substation associated with data center development just outside city limits.

Hundreds of residents packed the Henry County Board of Supervisors meeting July 28 to voice opposition to the possibility of data centers in the county, prompting supervisors to delay action on proposed zoning regulations and seek additional public review before moving forward.

Virginia lawmakers are weighing tougher restrictions on the state’s data center industry as residents voice growing frustration over noise, rising utility bills and other quality-of-life concerns.

The commonwealth's State Corporation Commission decided Wednesday that the billions of dollars being spent to build power lines to serve data centers in northern Virginia will not fall on ratepayers.

Water use has emerged as a new front in the battle over data center development. Collectively, data centers use over 2 billion gallons of water a year in Virginia.  Critics complain that tech companies and developers have entered into secret agreements with municipalities and water authorities to divert massive amounts of water to data centers. 

Traditionally not a large data center market, Culpeper County, located to the southwest of data center hotspot Loudoun County, has attracted a number of prospective developers. Amazon, EdgeCore, and DataBank are planning large-scale data center projects in the county.

More restrictive legislation could soon curb Virginia’s data center boom, as residents push back on increased noise and utility bills. In the Virginia General Assembly, Republican state Sen. Glen Sturtevant and Democratic Senate President Pro Tem L. Louise Lucas recently called on Gov. Abigail Spanberger to end the commonwealth’s $1.6 billion annual data center sales tax exemption.

The operator for the electric grid serving Richmond and much of Virginia says the region is on track to come up thousands of megawatts short of the electricity it expects to need within the next two to three years.

Northern Virginia and Richmond lead the way in approved and planned data centers across the Commonwealth.

While data center controversies have long focused on noise and water usage near residential neighborhoods, local wildlife experts are stepping in with an urgent warning about the delicate species at risk in Southwest Virginia. Among the species most vulnerable to this industrial expansion is the Eastern Box Turtle, which has been listed as a threatened species in Virginia since 2021.

Virginia lawmakers defending their House seats this fall face growing pressure to weigh in on the growth of data centers in a state with the highest concentration of them. Concerns over energy affordability and water resources are mounting, and House candidates in Virginia who once punted the issue to state governments and localities are being asked to take a clear stance on how to control their costs and environmental impact.

The late country singer David Allan Coe once recorded a song about a train wreck in Tennessee in 1918. “The Great Nashville Railroad Disaster” tells the true story of a routing mishap that feels a lot like Virginia politics right now, except with more trains and more tracks, but all converging on the same place, which for our purposes is Capitol Square.

Amazon has filed an application to transform George Washington University’s campus in Loudoun County, Virginia, into new data centers, a proposal that’s drawn pushback from residents and an elected official. Supervisor Juli Briskman, whose district includes the project site, said in a lengthy social media statement that the plan calls for 800,000 square feet of data center space.