House panel halts bills tied to data center power costs

A subcommittee in the Virginia House of Delegates on Wednesday halted two Senate bills aimed at examining whether large electricity users could shift power grid costs onto other customers.

The House Labor and Commerce Subcommittee #3 voted to continue Senate Bill 339 to the 2027 session and table Senate Bill 619, according to records from the Virginia Legislative Information System. Both bills had previously passed the Senate.

Senate Bill 339, introduced by Sen. Russet Perry, D-Loudoun, would direct the State Corporation Commission to review how certain electric infrastructure costs are allocated among different customer groups.

The legislation would require regulators to examine whether customers that are not high-load users could be subsidizing transmission, generation or distribution costs tied to facilities such as large data centers.

According to the commission’s fiscal impact statement, the agency would need to hire a consultant to assist with technical analysis to carry out the review proceedings required under the bill.

The second measure, Senate Bill 619 from Sen. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun, focused on facilities with very large electricity demand. The bill would require operations using more than 90 megawatts of electricity to obtain a certificate of operation from the State Corporation Commission before beginning service.

Under the proposal, regulators would evaluate whether sufficient electricity supply, grid capacity and infrastructure exist to support the facility and whether the project could create an unreasonable cross-subsidy among utility customers.

The commission estimated the measure could result in between 30 and 60 new regulatory proceedings annually. To handle that workload, the agency said it would need 11 additional employees, including utilities analysts, engineers and attorneys, at an estimated cost of about $1.24 million per year beginning in fiscal year 2027.

Virginia has had rapid growth in electricity demand tied to data center development, particularly in Northern Virginia, home to one of the largest concentrations of data centers in the world. The industry’s growing energy demand has drawn increasing attention from lawmakers and regulators as they examine how infrastructure costs tied to large electricity users are allocated among utility customers.

With Wednesday’s subcommittee actions, neither bill will advance further during the 2026 legislative session.