Dominion Energy’s 48.5 GW Data Center Pipeline Forces $64 Billion Power Infrastructure Overhaul

Dominion Energy is facing one of the biggest power challenges in its history. Data centers in Virginia are requesting a massive amount of electricity. Total requests have reached 70,000 MW. That’s nearly three times Dominion’s all-time peak load of 24,678 MW, recorded on January 23, 2025.

Data center electricity requests in Virginia have hit 70,000 MW — nearly three times Dominion Energy’s all-time peak load.

The growth has been fast. Between 2021 and 2024, data centers went from 21% to 24% of all Virginia electricity sales. Over the past decade, data center demand grew by 20% each year. That trend isn’t slowing down. Starting in 2025, individual data center requests jumped from around 30 MW to between 300 MW and several gigawatts each. Dominion’s now getting about 10 new power requests every month, totaling 2,000 to 3,000 MW.

The pipeline keeps growing too. Total contracted data center capacity hit 48.5 gigawatts by December 2025, up from about 40 GW in early 2025. Around 25,000 MW are tied to projects expected to connect by 2031. Another 45,000 MW have no connection dates set yet. Wait times for connections have stretched out by several years.

To handle all this, Dominion’s spending big. It raised its five-year capital plan by 16% to $50.1 billion in February 2025. Of that, $17 billion is specifically for data center growth and clean energy. Key projects include a $1.5 billion power center near the James River, a planned $1 billion super high-voltage transmission line, and a new 1,000 MW natural gas plant in Chesterfield County.

Dominion’s also investing in cleaner energy. Its nearly $10 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will add 2.6 GW of carbon-free power. A $500 million joint venture with Amazon aims to develop a 300 MW small modular reactor, with plans to scale up to 5 GW of nuclear power for data centers.

To make sure data center companies help pay for new infrastructure, Dominion created a new rate class called GS-5. It’s designed to have data center developers directly fund the costs they’re driving. Virginia currently has 451 data centers, which collectively consumed 3,583 MW of electricity in 2024, illustrating the scale of existing demand before the latest surge. The total infrastructure overhaul is valued at $64 billion.

In October 2025, Dominion partnered with Appalachian Power and Invest SWVA to develop energy storage infrastructure in Southwest Virginia, targeting regional load management and helping attract data centers beyond the congested Northern Virginia core. As Virginia navigates this unprecedented energy expansion, the state’s recent rejection of algorithmic bias protections raises broader questions about whether consumer safeguards will keep pace with the rapid growth of AI-driven data center demand.