Dominion Energy has seen its forecast for new load from planned data centers in its territory increase by more than 88% over the past six months, the company said during its fourth-quarter earnings call Feb. 12.

Dominion has added about 19 GW of new data center load to its forecast since July, bringing the total to 40.2 GW. The new data centers have a “substation engineering letter of authorization” with the utility, which includes a detailed engineering plan paid for by developers.

Company executives also told analysts that the load was not included in PJM’s most recent forecasts.

“I think it’s just important for everyone to understand that the data center demand in Virginia, in northern Virginia and in Loudoun County continues to be very significant,” CEO Bob Blue said during the earnings call. “You see that in the numbers there.”

Dominion Energy Virginia (DEV) has recently completed two 500-kV lines to serve the state’s Data Center Alley, increasing available headroom by 6 GW, he added. While Loudoun County continues to see the most new data centers, Blue said they are now extending beyond there, especially down I-95 towards Richmond.

“Since we started tracking, we’ve connected approximately 450 data centers, representing nearly 9 GW of capacity,” Blue said. “Data center sales today represent about 26% of total sales for DEV.”

Data centers have wide policy support among political leaders in Virginia, and the Legislature is considering bills to address their rapid growth including Senate Bill 960, which focuses on ensuring that the cost of serving the facilities does not increase rates for other electric customers. The bill cleared the Senate. (See Virginia Legislators Introduce Bills to Deal with Data Center Growth.)

“These kinds of debates about one customer class subsidizing another customer class have been going on since the beginning of utility regulation, and there are ways always to address that in Virginia, particularly with biennial reviews,” Blue said.

Dominion will file its next biennial with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission in March, and Blue said he was sure the process would allow the utility to keep meeting new demand without unfairly burdening other customers.

Uncertainty Offshore

A key piece of infrastructure needed to meet the ever-higher demand from data centers is the utility’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, which is facing rising costs due to the need for more transmission infrastructure — in part the result of rising demand for materials. (See PJM Network Upgrades Boost Cost of Dominion OSW Project 9%.)

CVOW is 50% complete and on schedule for completion next year, and it is supported by Virginia law with the backing of all of the commonwealth’s bipartisan political leaders, Blue said. Offshore wind has faced opposition from the new Trump administration, but Blue said that should not impact the in-progress project.

“This project is consistent with the goal of securing American ‘energy dominance,’ and is part of a comprehensive ‘all-of the-above’ energy strategy to affordably meet growing energy needs,” Blue said, working in two Republican talking points on energy.

Completion of CVOW still requires about $2.5 billion in components made abroad, mostly in Europe, and it is unclear how much of that could be impacted by tariffs implemented by President Trump, who on Feb. 11 reinstated a 25% tariff on steel and increased tariffs on aluminum imports to 25%.

“With respect to potential steel and aluminum tariffs in particular … generally, these types of tariffs are not intended to apply to most finished products,” Blue said. “We would consider the CVOW components to be finished products. That said, we don’t have the annexes to accompany the executive order. We can’t know what if any of our remaining spend would be potentially subject to tariffs.”

Dominion owns the Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut, which had a 92% capacity factor in 2024 and has most of its capacity under contract through 2029, Blue said. The plant has options for selling power long-term beyond that with Massachusetts legislation authorizing additional procurements of nuclear power — or possibly setting up a co-located data center.

“We feel strongly that any data center option needs to be pursued in a collaborative fashion with stakeholders in Connecticut,” Blue said. “At this point, we don’t have a timeline for potential announcements.”