Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) expects to connect 15 more data centers to the grid in Virginia over the course of 2024. That’s after connecting 15 facilities last year totaling almost a gigawatt of capacity, according to DatacenterDynamics.
In its most recent earnings presentation, the company said it had connected 94 data centers with more than 4 GW of capacity in Northern Virginia since 2019. The company didn’t include the capacity of those 15 facilities going live this year, and in the company’s 1Q24 earnings call CEO Robert Blue said he doesn’t know how quickly they will ramp up to full capacity.
Dominion’s 2023 annual report said data centers represented 24 percent of Virginia Power’s electricity sales for the years ended December 2023, up from 21 percent in 2022. The utility said individual facility demand is growing from around 30 MW to 60-90 MW, and campus requests are now ranging from 300 MW to “several GW.”
During the earnings call, Blue said data centers were “ramping up faster than they have before and their requests are bigger than they’ve been before. Typically … they might ramp into that capacity over a four- to five-year type of period,” he said. “And now that same capacity that we’re interconnecting could be closer to a two- to three-year period. We’re going to see substantial load growth driven by electrification data centers for the foreseeable future,” he added.
For the three months ended March 2024, Dominion posted net income of $674 million, compared to $981 million for the same period in 2023. Operating earnings (non-GAAP) for the quarter were $483 million compared to $515 million in 2023, reports DatacenterDynamics.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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