Microsoft Preserves Right to Fight Virginia Data Center Transmission Order

✓What's documented Confirmed by a Microsoft spokesperson's on-record statement to Utility Dive and by the company's Aug. 28 notice of appeal filed with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Microsoft filed a notice of appeal against the Virginia SCC's July 31 order requiring Dominion Energy to directly assign some transmission costs to large-load data centers, though the company says it hasn't decided whether to formally appeal. The order requires a mandatory customer contribution for the substations and lines built specifically to connect data centers to the grid, rather than spreading that cost across all ratepayers. Google, also a party to the case, said it's comfortable with the mandatory cost assignment, splitting the hyperscalers on the same cost-allocation question playing out in state dockets nationwide.

• Microsoft's Aug. 28 notice of appeal preserves, but doesn't commit to, a formal challenge; the company has until late November to decide.
• SCC's July 31 order requires Dominion to file, within 90 days, a policy change requiring direct-connect data centers to cover the cost of substations and transmission lines built to serve them.
• Google, also a hyperscaler party to the case, told Utility Dive it's 'comfortable' with the mandatory cost assignment and called the commission's order 'thoughtful.'
• Attorneys representing consumer and environmental interests in the case called the SCC's decision legally solid and said Microsoft had ample notice of the proceeding.