Virginia's data center pipeline keeps growing, and the utility that serves most of it has now put a number on the latest stretch. In its third-quarter report on 30 October, Dominion Energy said the contracted data center capacity in its Virginia territory stood at about 54.9 GW at the end of September. That is 6.3 GW or 13% more than in December 2025.
Three Stages, One Headline Number
The 54.9 GW is not one block of signed demand. Dominion splits it by how far each customer has come. About 12.2 GW sits under electric service agreements, the stage with a signed contract. A further 9.8 GW has construction authorizations, and 32.8 GW is in detailed engineering. In other words, most of the volume is still being worked out between the utility and the developer.
On the earnings call, management described the customers as being onboarded under a large-load framework approved by the Virginia State Corporation Commission. The stated purpose is to keep costs from shifting to existing customers and to limit the risk of stranded assets if a project does not materialize. Residential bills are forecast to rise about 2.3% a year on average under the preferred resource plan.
What The Utility Plans To Build
The quarter itself was a good one: operating earnings of $1.28 a share and revenue of $5.62 billion, up 24%. The company expects to land in the top half of its 2026 guidance range and plans close to $65 billion of capital investment from 2026 to 2030, according to Zacks.
The resource plan update filed in mid-October adds and accelerates 4 GW of solar and 2 GW of battery storage compared with last year's preferred plan, according to a summary of the call. The summary reports no new gas plant details; the large combined-cycle project in Cumberland County was covered separately (our report). The offshore wind project off the Virginia coast is about 85% complete, with the last turbine targeted for the end of 2027.
Contracted Is Not Connected
If you plan or supply equipment for a campus in this region, read the stage, not the total. A site under a service agreement has a signed contract; a site in engineering has a conversation. The gap between the two is where bridging power usually appears: standby sets that carry a building through its first months, or engine plants that stay on site longer than anyone wrote in the first drawing. Ask the developer which stage the project is in before you quote a schedule that depends on the grid arriving. More on this on our data center page.
Sources: Zacks (Yahoo Finance), Motley Fool (call transcript), MarketScreener
