Virginia County With 37 Data Centers Tells Staff to Turn Off the Lights

Henrico County, Virginia—home to 37 data centers with 17 more planned, some on former Civil War battlefields—is facing a 24.9% electricity rate hike on July 1 that will add roughly $5 million to its annual costs. In response, County Manager John Vithoulkas emailed thousands of employees, including teachers and first responders, urging them to cut consumption: switch off lights and computers, unplug idle devices, and avoid space heaters. The county frames the request as fiscal and environmental stewardship, noting the increase flows from a multi-year Dominion Energy contract negotiated through VEPGA and applies to over 170 Virginia localities.

The email lands against a backdrop of mounting local friction over the data center boom. Residents at a May meeting raised alarms about water use, noise, and surging utility bills—one homeowner saw her bill double in January despite running solar panels and a heat pump. The broader pattern is that data centers drive up grid costs for everyone nearby, and because durable power infrastructure takes years to build, developers lean on stopgaps like gas turbines and, in Henrico’s case, potentially more than 300 diesel generators.

The significance is the inversion of who pays: state legislation passed last year was meant to shield ordinary ratepayers from data-center-driven increases, yet bills keep climbing. Henrico’s plea for employees to economize on power—while energy-hungry facilities multiply across the county—captures the growing tension between the AI-fueled data center buildout and the communities subsidizing its electricity demand.