Dominion Energy reported earnings of $567 million for the fourth quarter and $3 billion for 2025, as executives offered updates on the firm’s offshore wind project and pipeline of data centers coming onto its system.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project was delayed by a federal decision that has since been overturned by the courts, but its total cost increased only slightly, to $11.5 billion from $11.2 billion before the delay, the company told the Securities and Exchange Commission in January. (See Dominion Wins Injunction, Can Restart Offshore Wind Construction.)
“We’re now over 70% complete,” CEO Robert Blue said during an earnings call Feb. 23. “We continue to be on track for the delivery of first power to the grid by the end of March. That will represent a remarkable project milestone.”
The installation of monopiles went more quickly than expected, as has work around the transmission elements of CVOW, which are over 70% installed, with the rest of the equipment on-site at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal awaiting installation.
The towers are 70% manufactured, and the blades are 30% manufactured. Dominion successfully completed the first turbine in January.
“During the first few iterations, we’re deliberately moving more slowly in order to ensure we figuratively measure twice and cut once,” Blue said. “We view this as prudent construction management aligned with the lessons we’ve learned over years of large project construction.”
Once the injunction was lifted, winter weather added to another week of delays in the turbine installation process, Blue said. Workers are getting used to the process, as Dominion has seen in other parts of the project, and turbine installation should get easier and take less time as it continues.
While the project is expected to deliver its first power in the next month or so, Dominion’s schedule to finish CVOW runs through July 2027. That includes some expected downtime for weather, but delays will raise the budget by about $150 million to $200 million/quarter, some of which would be covered by Dominion’s financing partner, Blue said.
One analyst asked about the possibility of the federal government appealing the decision that allowed CVOW construction to resume. Blue argued that would not make sense given rising demand in Dominion’s territory.
“We continue to see CVOW as the fastest way to get a significant amount of electricity at a low-cost way [online] for our customers who are leading the AI race, who are building ships for the Navy,” Blue said. “And so, we continue to believe it just makes sense for this project to be allowed to continue. Slowing it down, as was demonstrated with the last stop-work order, adds costs. And adding costs and delays in the data center capital of the world — we think that doesn’t make sense.”
The pipeline of new data centers Dominion hopes to serve continued to grow slightly in the past quarter.
“We now have over 48 GW in various stages of contracting as of December 2025, which compares to around 47 GW as of September, an increase of approximately 1.4 GW, or 3%,” Blue said.
That includes 10.2 GW that have signed an electric service agreement — the highest level of commitment — and 11 GW that have signed construction letters of authorization. That leaves 27.4 GW in the least certain category, which have a “substation engineering letter of authorization,” where the utility is reimbursed for detailed engineering plans.
Load growth is already showing up on its system, with 14 out of its top 20 demand days in history having occurred in the past 14 months, the company reported.
Data centers are also at issue with Dominion’s Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut, where it continues to look for an off-taker.
“In January, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection issued a zero-carbon energy request for proposals for which Millstone is eligible,” Blue said. “Bids are due in the RFP in March. The Connecticut RFP process also intends to coordinate bid evaluation in conjunction with other New England states. In addition to state-sponsored procurement, we continue to evaluate the prospect of supporting incremental data center activity.”
Any deals with data centers would “need to be pursued in a collaborative fashion with stakeholders in Connecticut,” and Dominion remains committed to achieving a constructive outcome for the nuclear plant, he added.
