According to the Energy Justice Lab at Indiana University, Dominion Energy disconnected 339,000 households from electrical service in Virginia for nonpayment in 2024. Appalachian Power disconnected another 43,000 customers. These numbers are startlingly high. Presumably they include many struggling households whose service was disconnected and reconnected more than once that year because they just couldn’t afford to keep electricity flowing on a continuous basis.
The lab doesn’t have information for all 50 states. But among the 23 states that reported data, Virginia had the highest disconnection rate. Things are about to get even worse.
Disconnections and energy insecurity
Every utility disconnection upends a household. The loss of power can make a home unlivable without light, heating, cooling and refrigeration. It can be stigmatizing and destabilizing for a family.
But disconnections themselves are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the larger problem of energy insecurity. Many low-income families must regularly wrestle to determine which expenses — like prescription medicine, food, transportation, and electricity — get paid, and which get deferred. The reality is that a family can’t go without any of these necessities.
But households with limited budgets are often forced to make impossible choices. With rising electricity rates, more families will face this dilemma.
Data centers are driving up electric bills, but not everyone is equally impacted
Dominion Energy is currently seeking approval for a 15% base increase on the rate it charges for electricity. Significant rate increases will become more frequent in the future thanks to growing energy demand from the data center industry in Virginia.
Data centers use astronomical amounts of electricity. One data center campus can use as much power as tens of thousands of households. A 2024 study commissioned by the General Assembly found that total electricity consumption in Virginia is expected to double in the next fifteen years, thanks mainly to demand from data centers.
The catch is, the infrastructure doesn’t yet exist to create or transmit all this new electricity. Data center companies — including Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta — are some of the biggest and most powerful businesses in the world. They are using some of their political might to ensure that they don’t have to pay for all this new electrical infrastructure themselves. The authors of the 2024 legislative study found that “data centers’ increased energy demand will likely increase system costs for all customers, including non-data center customers.”
This is going to impact everyone’s energy bill, but it’s going to hurt low-income Virginians the most. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Low Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) tool, families in the commonwealth earning the median household income — around $90,000 — typically pay about 2% of their budget on energy (including both electricity and gas). But families at or below the poverty threshold pay on average a striking 22% of their income on heating, cooling and power. These figures make clear that, unless we take action, utility disconnections will become even more widespread in Virginia.
We don’t have to stand idly by
Lawmakers in Virginia passed legislation in 2024 that protects households from utility disconnection if the temperature is expected to dip below freezing or get above 92 degrees that day. This is an important step, and a humane policy that will literally save lives.
But Virginia has a disconnection rate many times higher than other states, according to the data at the Energy Justice Lab. We can do better. Other states, for instance, have laws on the books that protect vulnerable residents — such as senior citizens, infants or people with disabilities — from utility disconnection.
Virginia can also double-down on efforts to bring energy efficiency and renewable energy to low-income households. That’s good for the environment and for working families. In the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress designated $156 million for low-income Virginians in the “Solar for All” program, which the Trump administration is now trying to take back. This money, and programs like it, are essential to help families pay their bills in a time of increasing energy costs.
Finally, lawmakers in Virginia can take measures to ensure that data centers and large tech firms are paying their fair share for the energy they use, and not passing infrastructure costs on to residential consumers. Regulators in Ohio recently stood up to the data center industry by placing them in a separate rate class with additional requirements, given their extraordinary thirst for energy. Last session, the General Assembly required the State Corporation Commission — which regulates electrical utilities in Virginia — to consider this possibility as well.
Virginia can follow other states’ lead to protect residents’ access to affordable electricity. Who knows, maybe Virginia can pioneer bold new action to achieve this goal. Right now, at least in terms of utility disconnections, we are instead leading in the very worst way.
Eric Bonds is professor of sociology at the University of Mary Washington.