Virginia Governor Signs Dominion-Backed Bills. All Eyes on Regulators Now.

Republish Gov. Abigail Spanberger speaks in the chamber of the Supreme Court of Virginia on March 2 in Richmond. Credit: Mike Kropf-Pool/Getty Images Related Virginia Legislature Bucks Governor’s Amendments to Dominion-Backed Bill Environmental, Community Groups to Challenge Regulators’ Approval of Dominion’s Gas Plant Data Centers in PJM Grid Can Rely Solely on Generators During the Cold, DOE Rules Share This Article Republish Most Popular As El Niño Approaches, Scientists Predict Fierce Heatwaves, Wildfires and Floods Plugging Away at the Millions of Derelict Oil and Gas Wells in the US After a Century Powering Its Growth With Dams, Seattle Settles With Tribes That Lost Their River RICHMOND, Va.—Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Friday signed legislation that directs regulators to assign electricity costs to data centers and allows Dominion Energy to spend $900,000 a mile burying local distribution lines.

The bills from Senate President Pro Tem Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Henrico, could have also required data centers to cover the costs of buying electricity from the capacity market through PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator for Virginia, 12 other states and the District of Columbia. But that requirement was removed by Spanberger and replaced with more regulatory authority to allocate costs.

Those capacity market costs, used when there’s peak strain on the grid, ballooned from about $28 per megawatt-hour in 2023 to $329 in 2025, contributing to a 1.5 to 5 percent increase in all customers’ bills. The pace at which data centers want to connect to the grid and the lack of new power generation have caused a supply-and-demand imbalance, raising costs.