Virginia Beach Electricity Costs Are Going Up — Here's Why

The numbers

Dominion Energy customers in Virginia currently pay around $0.145/kWh on average. At the historical escalation rate of about 4.0% a year, that rate compounds quickly if it holds:

Projection based on Virginia's historical rate escalation of 4.0%/yr, compounded annually. Not a guarantee — actual future rates depend on regulatory decisions.

That's a 119% increase over 20 years if the trend continues — meaning the same household usage that costs $145 today per 1,000 kWh would cost roughly $318 at that point.

What's actually driving the increase

Northern Virginia is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world, and their enormous, growing electricity demand is a major driver of new transmission spending across Dominion Energy’s entire Virginia service territory — costs that get spread across all ratepayers, not just the data centers themselves.

How residents are fighting back

You can't vote down a rate case yourself, but you can reduce how much of your bill is exposed to it. Virginia's HB 395 now allows a permit-free, no-utility-approval plug-in solar system up to 1200W — effective January 1, 2027. Most plug-in systems this size don't qualify for net metering, so the strategy that actually works is maximizing self-consumption — using the power as you generate it, rather than exporting it back to the grid at a rate that keeps rising anyway.

Bottom line

Virginia Beach rates are going up, and the drivers behind it — the data-center boom in “Data Center Alley” — aren't going away soon. Every kWh you generate yourself is a kWh permanently insulated from the next rate case.