USA, Virginia, Arlington: Virginia’s State Corporation Commission has directed Dominion Energy to develop a policy requiring data centres to cover grid-upgrade costs when new substations and transmission lines are built exclusively for their facilities.
The decision follows pressure from Governor Abigail Spanberger’s administration, which urged regulators to prevent the cost of data-centre-related transmission infrastructure from being spread across households and small businesses. Dominion had sought approval to recover upgrade costs through higher monthly electricity bills.
Dominion Energy currently has more than 200 transmission projects under development as it works to strengthen Virginia’s electricity infrastructure and meet demand from over 600 data centres operating in the state.
“This order – which is projected to save Virginians hundreds of millions of dollars – makes sure that data centres are paying the full cost of the transmission infrastructure their developments require,” Spanberger said.
Dominion said it already has measures intended to prevent data-centre-driven costs from being passed to residential customers. The utility plans to introduce additional protections through an amended line-extension policy, ensuring that energy-intensive customers pay an appropriate share of infrastructure costs.
The ruling comes as Virginia considers how to manage rapidly growing electricity demand while financing the substations, transmission lines and other grid infrastructure required by large data-centre developments.
Source: ABC 13 News
