Future Ready
Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC) serves more than 184,000 homes and businesses across Northern Virginia, including communities at the epicenter of the digital economy. At the heart of NOVEC's mission is providing safe, reliable electric service at competitive prices.
Since 2015, the number of data center accounts served by NOVEC has grown from 14 to nearly 100. During that same period, NOVEC's residential customers experienced the smallest increase in electric bills among Virginia's electric utilities and cooperatives.
This outcome reflects, in part, NOVEC's longstanding approach to assigning costs to the customers that cause them. Data center customers have been directly assigned more than $1.7 billion in upfront costs for dedicated infrastructure, helping ensure those costs are borne by the customers requiring the investments rather than being shifted to other customer-members.
NOVEC has periodically updated its rate classifications and business practices to reflect changing market conditions and customer needs. Given the significant changes in the electric industry, customer growth, and power supply environment, NOVEC believes it is appropriate to modernize those provisions again.
What NOVEC is Doing
NOVEC is pursuing a three-step strategy (outlined below) to reduce uncertainty, improve transparency, and better align costs and obligations, where practicable, with the customers and service requirements driving them.
Questions and Answers
Is NOVEC raising rates for residential and small business customers?
No. NOVEC is not proposing any changes to rates for residential and small business customers at this time. NOVEC is taking additional steps to help limit the impact of costs associated with serving data centers on smaller customer-members. However, no electric utility can eliminate the effects of broader market conditions, including rising power supply and transmission costs. These measures being taken by NOVEC are intended to help mitigate those impacts and ensure costs are assigned fairly.
Why are power costs increasing across Virginia?
Electric utilities who use PJM, our multi-state energy marketplace, are experiencing higher costs due to increasing electricity demand, retirement of existing power generation facilities needing to be replaced, transmission investments, reliability requirements, and higher wholesale prices. These are regional industry trends affecting many utilities, not just NOVEC.
What is the purpose of updating the Terms and Conditions in Step 1?
The updates modernize our rate classifications. Clarification is needed for when large customers transition from one rate class to another based on their usage to ensure customers are appropriately classified based on how they use NOVEC power.
Will customer-members have an opportunity to provide input?
Yes. Throughout the summer and fall, NOVEC plans to hold community conversations and engage stakeholders to gather feedback. For questions or to sign up for periodic updates by email, click the “ask a question” button on this web page.
What happens after this first filing?
Following the Terms and Conditions filing, NOVEC will:
• Complete a cost allocation study
• Conduct stakeholder engagement
• Evaluate power supply options
• Determine whether any additional filings are necessary
No decisions regarding future filings have been finalized.
