Virginia county asks all employees, including schools, to conserve power due to AI-driven electricity price hikes — state’s 400-plus data centers steadily increasing demand, grid expansion, and pricing

In yet another case of the AI-driven blues, 404 Media reports that Henrico County, VA, Manager John Vithoulkas sent an email to all county employees — including those in schools and social services — asking them to conserve energy by turning off unused lights and computers, using blinds to lessen heat buildup, and curbing or stopping the usage of heavy loads like space heaters.

That plea comes as the state’s main power provider repeatedly hikes rates, and those repeated increases are linked to the rapidly increasing demands of data center buildouts. According to the report, Henrico County already has 37 data centers within its borders, and more are coming to the area.

The net result of this increasing demand is that Henrico County and other Virginia government entities covered by a collective purchasing body called VEGPA are facing a 24.9% rate hike starting next month, so every dollar that those local governments can save counts.

Those rising rates come from the fact that Northern Virginia has the world’s highest concentration of data centers, numbering over 400 existing installations, and hundreds more are in the pipeline.

The region’s proximity to Washington, DC, and the multiple submarine cables landing at Virginia Beach made it the perfect spot for byte collection, so much so that it’s unofficially called Datacenter Alley.

Most Virginia counties with high data center concentrations are served by Dominion Energy, and that utility was feeding 26% of its power to data centers in 2023, a figure that certainly has increased substantially since then, especially considering that large-scale builds are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Dominion has continued expanding its infrastructure to keep up with the demand, a costly buildout that multiple entities decry as having been borne by households, despite the fact that data centers are in a separate rate class.

While Dominion claims the price hikes are due to rising fuel, infrastructure, and maintenance costs, homeowners and consumer-focused entities believe otherwise. Northern Virginia residents have seen their bills increase multiple times in the past three years, leaving them fuming, especially in the winter. Adding insult to injury, the bill for a new $1.47 billion gas storage facility was recently passed onto consumers.

A researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute thinks that the new gas plant wouldn’t be necessary without data center-driven demand, and a representative of the Virginia Energy Consumer Alliance thinks that the added fuel costs are fully passed onto customers.

Dominion does argue that data centers pay more in upfront costs, but it’s hard not to see the shape of a feedback loop in which the grid is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding data centers, with regular Joes and Janes left to foot a chunk of the higher bills.