This is in Virgina, which passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020. This mandated that Dominion (the power company) transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Personally, I think this is a good thing in the long run, but in the short run, it means that Dominion has had to invest a lot in building out renewable projects that haven't come online yet. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab recently did an analysis on ele…
Capacity shortfalls and needs to conserve (i.e., asking customers to reduce usage) are not necessarily 1:1 with rate increases and overall electricity costs. Especially in the short term. In other words, large “base loads” like data centers could both reduce the average power bill AND contribute to capacity shortages and load shedding.
Many regions/markets have relatively stable retail rate structures, i.e., residential and most commercial customers don’t pay day-to-day and hour-to-hour electricity market prices. Their per-kWh and per-kW rates are adjusted on much longer time scales, like once a year.
So, big base load customers sign contracts in one year, resulting in better utilization of grid assets, so prices stay lower in the next year(s). But if those customers are not flexible (or are not on a rate structure that encourages them to be flexible), they could contribute to short-term capacity shortages this year. And that will have no impact on many rate payers’ bills, ant least not before rates get adjusted later.