The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) has approved the creation of a new rate class for large load users, including data centers.

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s major electric utility, proposed the new rate class in September. It applies to utility customers that consume more than 25MW of energy and have a monthly load factor exceeding 75 percent. Most of Virginia’s approximately 450 data centers are likely to fall under this new customer class.

It will require high-use customers to sign a 14-year contract, ensuring they will pay for their proposed energy costs, even if they use less or if the data centers aren’t built. According to the utility, this is to ensure that if companies propose a data center and build the energy infrastructure to support it, they will cover the costs regardless of whether they construct it.

Under the rules, developers would be subject to a minimum demand charge of 85 percent for transmission and distribution infrastructure and 60 percent for generation. If they exceed those minimums, they would be charged more.

In addition, exit fees would apply if a large-load user shuts down before the end of its contract, making them liable for the minimum demand charges regardless of the number of years remaining in the contract.

In addition to this, the SCC has also approved a base rate increase for Dominion Energy that will raise the average residential customer’s monthly bill by $13.60, representing a nine percent increase over the next two years. The state regulator said that Dominion initially applied for a rate increase that would have raised bills by $19.57 over two years.

Virginia is the latest state to introduce new rate classes for large load users.

Earlier this year, Ohio regulators voted to approve a settlement that would require new data center customers to pay for at least 85 percent of the energy they say they need each month, even if they use less, to cover the cost of the infrastructure needed to bring electricity to those facilities.

Also, this year, Oregon passed a bill to ensure that data centers and cryptocurrency operations cover a fair share of the costs associated with new power plants and transmission lines.