Henrico County, Virginia, spent years courting data center operators. Executives pitched tax breaks, ample land and fast fiber connections. The pitch worked. Today the county hosts 37 such facilities, with 17 more planned. But the welcome has worn thin.
On June 26 County Manager John Vithoulkas sent an email to public employees. Starting July 1 their electricity rates would jump 24.9 percent. The increase would add roughly $5 million a year to bills for county government buildings and schools. His ask was straightforward. Turn off lights in unoccupied rooms. Shut down computers at the end of the day. Unplug chargers. Adjust blinds to block heat. Skip portable space heaters, which can cost the county $150 to $300 each per year. Simple steps. Yet they reveal a larger tension.
Virginia now counts nearly 600 data centers. More than 100 others sit proposed or under construction. In 2024 these facilities accounted for almost 40 percent of the state’s total electricity consumption, according to a Consumer Reports analysis published March 20, 2026. Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley holds some of the hungriest operations. Its six largest draw a combined 781 megawatts. A typical hyperscale site can consume as much power as 100,000 households.
The strain shows up in prices. Wholesale electricity costs near data centers have climbed as much as 267 percent over five years, Bloomberg reported in its September 2025 investigation. PJM Interconnection, the grid operator covering much of the mid-Atlantic, logged more than $9.3 billion in added costs for the 12 months ending June 2025. Dominion Energy cited surging data center demand when it sought rate increases that would add about $20 a month for the average Virginia residential customer over two years.
Residents feel it. John Steinbach lives in Manassas. His January 2026 electric bill hit $281. The prior month it ran closer to $100. “It’s just so far beyond any bill that I’ve ever had,” he told Consumer Reports. Nearly three-quarters of Virginia voters blame data centers for higher costs, a January 2026 survey by Global Strategy Group and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network found. Nationally 78 percent of adults expressed concern that new facilities would push bills higher.
And. The conservation request isn’t isolated. TechRadar first detailed the Henrico email on July 2, 2026. It noted the county’s appeal to both fiscal and environmental stewardship. Officials also urged water savings amid drought. Shorter showers. Full loads only in washers and dishwashers. No automatic sprinklers. Data centers require massive cooling. Their thirst compounds local pressure.
Statewide forecasts paint a stark picture. A Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report projected data centers could almost double Virginia’s energy demand within a decade. Unconstrained growth might see consumption double in 10 years, with data centers as the main driver. Energy prices would likely rise for all customers as a result. The December 2024 JLARC document warned that supplying enough power to match this pace would prove difficult.
Utilities scramble. Grid upgrades take years. Interconnection queues stretch long. PJM’s capacity market prices for 2026-2027 delivery soared to $329 per megawatt, more than 10 times the prior year’s level. Data center growth sits at the center of that spike. Meanwhile local governments shift tactics. Fairfax and Loudoun counties have tightened zoning. Greater setbacks from homes. Stricter noise rules. Mandatory reviews instead of automatic approvals. The Belfer Center noted in an April 2026 analysis that communities once eager for investment now push back on land use and environmental effects.
Yet the appetite for more capacity continues. AI training and inference demand dense computing power. A single large AI-focused data center can draw 100 megawatts or far more. Projections vary but consensus points upward sharply. The International Energy Agency sees global data center electricity use climbing fast. In the United States the sector could reach 12 percent of total consumption by 2028, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates suggest. Virginia stands on the front line of that surge.
Critics highlight uneven burdens. Data centers often pay the full cost of service under current rates. Their presence still lifts system-wide expenses. New transmission lines. Extra generation. Backup diesel generators. Virginia has permitted more than 8,000 of those generators in recent years. During heat waves they belch emissions. One-third of the state’s data centers sit within 500 feet of homes or schools, state auditors found. Residents complain of noise, traffic and air quality.
“Nothing says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness like breathing in diesel fumes,” Elena Schlossberg, who opposes further development in Prince William County, told E&E News in a July 1, 2026 article on grid strains during record heat. Prince William already has 33 completed data centers and 31 more planned. Similar stories play out across Northern Virginia.
Some operators explore solutions. Tech companies discuss small nuclear reactors, behind-the-meter generation and flexible operations that curtail load during peak stress. Google has experimented with demand response. But scaling those approaches across hundreds of facilities remains unproven at the needed pace. Grid planners face a classic mismatch. Data centers arrive faster than infrastructure can expand.
Henrico’s situation offers a microcosm. The county welcomed investment. Jobs and tax revenue followed. Now public buildings, including schools, must dim lights and power down devices to offset the very demand those facilities created. Vithoulkas framed the request as shared responsibility. Yet many locals see a broken bargain. They pay higher rates while giant windowless buildings consume power around the clock.
Recent coverage underscores the breadth. Tom’s Hardware reported July 1, 2026, on the same Henrico directive, linking it to the state’s more than 400 data centers and steady demand growth. Inc. magazine detailed how years of courting have given way to conservation pleas. The pattern repeats. Local leaders once celebrated each new announcement. Today they calculate the added megawatts and revised rate forecasts.
Broader economic questions loom. Data centers support cloud computing, artificial intelligence and much of modern digital life. Their growth underpins innovation. But the energy arithmetic grows uncomfortable. Goldman Sachs and others forecast massive increases in power demand through 2030. Some analyses suggest data centers could claim 39 to 57 percent of Virginia’s electricity by then. Even conservative estimates signal strain.
Regulators debate fixes. Consumption taxes. Revised zoning. Incentives for flexible operations. Location guidelines that steer new projects away from congested pockets. Virginia enacted a data center electricity consumption tax of $0.011 per kilowatt-hour while preserving some sales tax breaks, recent discussions on X noted. Whether such measures slow the pace or merely fund upgrades remains uncertain.
Back in Henrico classrooms and offices the immediate reality is practical. Flip the switch. Unplug the charger. Close the blinds. These small acts won’t reshape the grid. They do signal that the era of easy accommodation has ended. Demand has outrun supply. Prices reflect that gap. And ordinary users, including schoolchildren and county staff, help close it.
The story extends beyond one county. Similar pressures appear in Texas, Georgia, and parts of the Midwest. Yet Virginia’s concentration makes it the clearest case study. Its grid operator, its utilities and its local governments wrestle openly with the trade-offs. How much growth is too much? Who bears the cost? When will new generation and transmission arrive at scale?
For now the lights go off earlier in Henrico buildings. Computers power down at night. Space heaters stay in storage. The email from June 26 reads as both pragmatic governance and quiet admission. The welcome mat for data centers remains out. But the meter is running faster than expected. And everyone is asked to pay attention.
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