Dominion prepares for 70,000 MW in data center demand

During a cold spell on Jan. 23, 2025, Dominion Energy hit an all-time peak load with 24,678 megawatts of electricity use recorded.

But that’s nothing compared to what future data centers will demand, the Fortune 500 utility has told the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Data centers that have filed requests with Dominion are asking for nearly three times that amount of power, or 70,000 megawatts per day, Dominion officials wrote in a Feb. 2 filing.

Dominion receives large-load delivery point requests — known as DP requests — regularly for high-use power customers like manufacturing plants or data centers.

In November, the SCC directed the utility to explain its large load interconnection queue process, which manages DP requests. Dominion wrote that it has about 25,000 megawatts under request for facilities projected to be connected between now and the end of 2031, in addition to about 45,000 more megawatts for projects without connection dates set.

The requests total about 70,000 megawatts of power, according to the filing.

“The company is receiving more DP requests all the time,” Dominion Vice President of Electric Transmission R. Matthew Gardner wrote in testimony to the SCC. “Each month, the company receives approximately 10 new DP requests, typically totaling [2,000 to 3,000 megawatts].

“Previously, the company was able to manage the fewer number and smaller size of the DP requests it received without a formal queue,” Gardner added.  “However, the recent significant increase in the volume of DP requests the company is receiving, combined with the increased size of many DP requests that represent large-load customers, highlighted the need for the company to develop additional structure to its DP request process to continue to manage the queue efficiently and transparently.”

Dominion had 40,000 megawatts of data center-related capacity requests as of December 2024, according to 2025 testimony from Dominion’s Director of Data Center Practice Stan Blackwell.

In that testimony, Blackwell shared a chart that showed Virginia had 451 data centers in 2024 and that they use 3,583 megawatts of electricity.

Last week, both Microsoft and Google made their own filings on the matter, reserving the right to participate. “Microsoft has substantial data center operations and investments in Virginia and has plans for an expansion of data center operations in the commonwealth,” Microsoft’s filing dated Feb. 12 said.

Dominion Energy serves more than 2.7 million electric customers in Virginia.