Demand
Virginia Commercial Electricity Sales
Monthly megawatthours sold to Virginia commercial-sector ultimate customers. Commercial sales include data centers alongside every other customer in the sector, making this an official long-run electricity-demand proxy for the region where U.S. data-center load is most concentrated.
Virginia Commercial Electricity Sales
Virginia commercial customers used 7,770,668.6 megawatthours megawatthours in 2026-06-01.
Methodology
The series uses EIA's monthly Form EIA-861M state-level sales to ultimate customers. The chart selects Virginia (VA), the commercial sector (COM), and the Megawatthours field, with one timestamp on the first day of each reporting month.
The updater prefers EIA's official v2 retail-sales API when EIA_API_KEY is configured. The API reports sales in million kilowatthours, which are multiplied by 1,000 to express the chart in megawatthours. Without a key, the updater uses EIA's official HS861M 2010-.xlsx workbook, whose state-month sales column is already in megawatthours.
The history begins in January 2010 and includes complete months through the latest month available before the as-of date. EIA marks newer observations preliminary and may revise them; the source status is preserved in each point note.
Commercial-sector sales are a broad regional-demand measure. EIA notes that utilities can classify large customers by NAICS code or rate schedule, so some data centers may be reported in the industrial sector and classification practices can change. The chart does not isolate data centers, measure peak demand, or show electricity consumed by AI workloads.
Frequently asked questions
What does this chart measure?
It measures the monthly megawatthours sold by Virginia utilities to all commercial-sector ultimate customers, as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It is a state-level sales series, not a meter reading for data centers.
Why is Virginia commercial electricity sales relevant to AI?
Northern Virginia is a major concentration of data centers, and commercial electricity sales capture the regional demand environment in which that infrastructure expands. The series gives an official long-run demand signal to compare with AI capacity, investment, and power-price charts.
Does this equal data-center electricity consumption?
No. It includes every commercial customer, such as offices, stores, hospitals, and other businesses. Some data centers may also be classified as industrial, and the series does not distinguish AI workloads from other computing or electricity use.
Why use megawatthours rather than average power?
Megawatthours are the sales unit reported by EIA and represent energy delivered over the month. They do not show the timing of demand or peak load; converting a monthly total to an average megawatt would require dividing by the number of hours in each month.
Are the latest observations final?
Not necessarily. EIA marks recent EIA-861M observations as preliminary and can revise them as utilities update their submissions. Each point note records the status supplied by the workbook or API.
How is the updater authenticated?
If EIA_API_KEY is present, the updater requests the official retail-sales API. The chart can also be refreshed without a key from EIA's official downloadable state workbook, so missing API credentials do not require fabricating or dropping the historical series.