Dominion Energy adds more than 5GW of contracted data center load to its pipeline

Dominion Energy, Virginia's primary electrical utility, has expanded its contracted data center pipeline by more than 5GW compared to the end of last year, signaling continued robust demand for power from the region's hyperscale computing sector. The company disclosed the increase during its second-quarter earnings call, noting that the additional capacity represents an 11 percent uptick in its contracted load pipeline.

The utility had reported a marginal increase in its pipeline during its fourth-quarter earnings results in February, with more than 48GW contracted as of December 2025, up from approximately 47GW in September. The latest figures indicate that demand from data center customers shows no signs of slowing, even as the industry faces growing scrutiny over grid reliability and power availability.

"Since our last update, we continue to see robust and durable demand from our differentiated, high-quality, low-risk data center customers," said Steven Ridge, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Dominion Energy, during the earnings call.

The announcement comes amid heightened concerns over grid stability in regions with dense data center concentrations. Last month, the PJM interconnection grid experienced a significant voltage disturbance caused by a large proportion of data center load abruptly disconnecting from the grid. The disruption originated in northern Virginia, an area served by Dominion, and has prompted renewed attention to how large power users interact with the transmission network.

"We did have a transmission line that experienced a fault last week that did go out of service. These are rare on our reliable grid, but they do occasionally occur," said Ed Baine, executive vice president and chief of utilities at Dominion. "We do expect, typically, the data centers would ride through these momentary events without shifting to backup power, but they didn't in this case."

Baine added that the utility has been sharing information with grid operators and other stakeholders to implement lessons learned from the incident. "We don't feel like there are significant investments that need to be made because we've been doing that in the grid, but we do believe there will continue to be other mitigating items that we'll implement," he said.

Beyond its data center portfolio, Dominion reported that its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project is now 81 percent complete. The utility said costs for the 2.6GW wind farm have increased by two percent to $11.65 billion, and warned that the timeline could slip, with the final turbine installation now expected by the end of 2027.

In addition, Dominion confirmed that its proposed acquisition by NextEra Energy, first announced in May, still requires several regulatory approvals and hearings before the transaction can be finalized. The deal, once completed, would mark one of the largest utility acquisitions in recent U.S. history and reshape the ownership of a key player in the data center power market.

The continued expansion of Dominion's data center pipeline underscores the broader trend of utilities in major digital infrastructure hubs racing to secure power supply for AI-driven computing demand. As grid capacity becomes an increasingly defining constraint for data center development, the ability of utilities like Dominion to manage both load growth and grid reliability will be critical to sustaining the industry's momentum.