Dan Charles

That's right.

Dominion Energy sells electricity, maintains the grid, builds power lines when they're needed, and regulators let them charge consumers just enough to cover those costs and collect some profit on top.

So when Dominion spends more money building new power lines for data centers, that extra cost translates directly into a little boost in the rates that everybody pays.

Right.

So this is surprisingly hard to figure out.

This wave of new data centers is just starting, for one thing.

It's not exactly clear what the costs will be.

You have some people saying electric bills could jump a lot, like $70 a month.

And others say there could even be cases where data centers actually reduce people's bills if utilities can spread all their fixed costs across this growing base of customers.

But based on what's happening in, for instance, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where utilities have proposed big increases in electricity rates, it seems like data centers there at least will likely cost an average household at least a few extra dollars every month.

Basically, Mike would like electric utilities to handle power lines for data centers the way they already handle power lines for solar and wind farms.

So here's an example.

Right now, there's a company that wants to build a big solar farm called Cassius Blue in southern Virginia.

That's named for a really pretty butterfly species, by the way.

Okay.

So in order for Cassius Blue, the solar farm, to connect to the electrical grid,

Huh.

Okay.

So it sounds like if you are a solar or wind farm generating electricity, you have to pay for the power lines.

That is the way the system works right now.