Thirteen Cooperatives: Virginia's Distribution Cooperatives and the Arrival of Load Larger Than the System
Thirteen electric distribution cooperatives serve Virginia, and JLARC projects that about 60 percent of the state's data center growth will occur in their territory. This reference sets out what the public record establishes about each: identity and jurisdiction, wholesale supply (nine of thirteen through Old Dominion Electric Cooperative), the six cases in which Rappahannock Electric Cooperative sought authority to serve hyperscale load through affiliates, and the four large-load rate schedule cases read against Dominion's collateral regime.
Thirteen electric distribution cooperatives serve Virginia. They are member-owned, governed by boards their members elect, and regulated by the State Corporation Commission on terms that differ from the investor-owned utilities in ways the public record rarely sets out in one place. Nine buy their power through Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, the wholesale cooperative they own. Data center load is arriving on several of them, and the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission projects that about 60 percent of Virginia's data center growth will occur in cooperative service territory. This reference sets out what the public record establishes about each of the thirteen.
It opens with its principal findings and is organised for consultation. Section 2 fixes identity and jurisdiction, including the count itself, and the statutes that govern cooperative rates, the duty to serve, and member-built substations. Section 3 traces wholesale supply. Section 4 covers affiliates and the six cases in which Rappahannock Electric Cooperative sought authority to serve hyperscale load through affiliates. Section 5 sets out exposure to arriving load from the federal utility survey and the cooperatives' own filings. Section 6 reads the four large-load rate schedule cases against Dominion's approved collateral regime, and sets out how the 2026 amendment to Va. Code § 56-577 closes retail choice to cooperative customers. Section 7 reports what the cooperatives filed, sections 8 and 9 cover finances and governance, and section 10 states the document's limits and open items.
Va. Code § 56-234 D, in effect from July 1, 2025, lets a cooperative meet its duty to serve a customer above 90 megawatts through an affiliate's unregulated sales, close to the authority the Commission said in October 2024 it could not find. Customer money held as liabilities, the deposits and advance payments of the large-load regime, took Rappahannock's equity-to-assets ratio below the 30 percent line at which its mortgage notes limit the return of capital to members.
Version 1.1 keeps the evidence base closed on September 7, 2026 and carries, each dated in the text, developments through October 9, 2026: the Commission's orders approving Mecklenburg's large-load schedule and, on conditions, Rappahannock's generation-services affiliate; the 2026 statutes on member-built cooperative substations and on utility disclosure for high energy use facilities; the appeal of Dominion's Rider T1 order; and the status of every open case tracked.
The evidence register at section 1 carries one row per source with its path, its hash, how far it was read, and whether it may be quoted. The State Corporation Commission filings and agency captures are deposited as archives whose internal paths are the register's paths: the evidence base deposited with version 1.0, and an archive of the sources read after the snapshot.