Virginia electricity rates

Northern Virginia carries more data-centre capacity than any other region in the world, and the growth has not slowed. Serving it requires enormous transmission investment, new generation and reserve capacity, and Virginia sits inside PJM, where the resulting scarcity has repriced the whole regional capacity market.

The central regulatory question in Virginia is who pays. Utilities and data-centre operators negotiate large-load tariffs, and the state's regulator has been working through whether those rates fully cover the cost of the infrastructure built to serve them. To the extent they do not, the difference lands on other customers.

Virginia is also mid-way through implementing the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which mandates a carbon-free fleet on a fixed schedule and places substantial offshore wind and solar investment into rate base.

The state's rate remains below the national average, but it rose faster than the national average. The trajectory is the story here, not the level.

Dominion Energy Virginia serves roughly two-thirds of the state including the northern Virginia data-centre corridor. Appalachian Power, an AEP company, serves the southwest, and electric co-operatives serve much of rural Virginia.

Virginia has only limited retail choice. Residential customers can generally switch only to a supplier offering one hundred per cent renewable power, and only where the incumbent utility does not offer an approved equivalent tariff. In practice most households cannot shop.

Watch the State Corporation Commission's large-load tariff proceedings. They will determine more about Virginia residential rates over the next decade than any efficiency programme.

Dominion's time-of-use and EV rate schedules are optional and materially different from the standard schedule. Households with an electric vehicle are frequently on the wrong one by default.