On June 26, the County Manager of Henrico County, Virginia, John Vithoulkas, sent an email to thousands of county employees asking them to help the local government conserve electricity. “Beginning July 1st, the rate we pay for electricity used in all Henrico County government and school facilities will increase dramatically — by 25%, increasing costs by an estimated $5 million next fiscal year. We anticipate more rate increases for electricity in the years ahead,” a copy of the email obtained by 404 Media said (emphasis his).
Henrico County is a community of more than 350,000 people in eastern Virginia just outside of Richmond. It also hosts 37 data centers and there are plans to build 17 more, including plans to convert hundreds of acres of Civil War battlefields into data centers. Thanks to its proximity to DC and vast amounts of land, Henrico County became a data center hub seemingly overnight and its services clients big and small. Meta built a data center there in 2017.
“To mitigate the impact of higher electric costs, I am asking that we, collectively, make slight adjustments to conserve electricity across our individual workspaces,” Vithoulkas wrote in the email. “Turn off your lights when leaving your workspace, including when you leave for the day. Turn off your computers/laptops at the end of each workday. If your workspace has windows, adjust the blinds to manage heat from sunlight. Unplug any appliances, chargers, or other electrical items when they are not in use. Please limit use of (or refrain altogether from using) space heaters. A typical space heater alone can cost the county from $150 to $300 per year in electricity costs.”
With the data centers have come problems and community pushback. During a May community meeting about new construction projects, Henrico residents discussed concerns about water use, noise, and the rising cost of their electric bills. One Henrico woman saw her electricity bill double in the month of January despite using solar panels and a heat pump to keep costs down.
When data centers move into communities they spike the cost of power for everyone who lives nearby. Often the people building new projects promise they’ll build out power infrastructure to make up the cost and prevent normal people from footing the bill. But power infrastructure is hard to build and takes time so developers often rely on short term solutions like gas and coal powered turbines. In Mississippi, an xAI data center runs on 27 gas turbines that belch pollutants into the air. In Henrico County, officials have said that some of the new data centers may be temporarily powered by more than 300 diesel generators.
Despite these efforts to power their own data centers, developers always need to plug into the local power grid. And until proper power infrastructure is built out, ratepayers foot the bill. Last year Virginia’s state legislature approved a rate hike for energy customers. Part of the rate hike included measures meant to mitigate rate increases for normal people due to data centers. Despite that, people have seen their power bills increase and Henrico County is telling its employees — a list of thousands of people that includes teachers and first responders — that they’ll need to tighten their belts.
Vithoulkas’s email said these small changes may seem insignificant but that they add up. “Each dollar we can save by conserving electricity is another dollar the county can reinvest into staff and the services we provide our residents,” it said. It also noted that many county buildings had been outfitted with solar panels and that the people of Henrico had faced similar challenges in the past.
Henrico County did not return 404 Media’s request for comment.