A Place in Line and a Date to Connect: Dominion Energy's Report on Its Large-Load Customers

In a report dated May 2026, Dominion Energy describes how a data center in its service area gets in line for power. Its footer calls it the GS-5 Large-Load Rate Class Report. The company says it has assigned energization dates to 25 gigawatts of new data centers "between now and 2031," for which it has current or soon-to-be-connected capacity. For another 45 gigawatts of new data center projects, the report says, the company has not yet offered future connection dates. Parts of the report follow, not the whole.

A Date, or a Place in Line

The company set up the queue "to address data center demand," it says. Each year, as the regional transmission organization it belongs to and the state commission approve more infrastructure projects, the company "will update the queue and assign energization dates, generally on a first-in, first-out basis." Pursuant to a directive from its regulators, the queue process itself "has been filed for review in a standalone proceeding."

State law, the report says, describes the company's duty to serve as one "to furnish reasonably adequate service and facilities at reasonable rates to any person, firm or corporation along its lines desiring the same." The report calls the requirement to furnish service to new accounts "subordinate to a higher duty to ensure the reliability of the electric grid and align our actions with existing customers' best interests and the Company's fiduciary responsibility to shareholders." The company "generally cannot outright refuse to provide service to a customer," it says, but it keeps "some latitude to place reasonable conditions on the provision of electric service," among them conditions related to timing and to cost recovery guarantees from the customer. State legislators, the report adds, have passed legislation that affirms its option to delay service where that is needed to keep the grid reliable and to avoid exceeding available generation or transmission capacity, among other things.

A place in the queue is not a date, and a date is not yet a meter set.

From a Request to a Meter

A connection begins, in the report's account, when a data center sends a request for service and capacity, with a site plan, a construction schedule, its load information with a ramp schedule, and its meter delivery method. The company answers with a feasibility report "to identify any critical flaws and high-level needs for energization." Then the customer decides whether to go on.

Going on starts with an Engineering Letter of Agreement. Signing it lets the company add the project to its queue and begin the engineering study and design. At signing, "a $250,000 cash payment is required to support engineering and design work," and if a project's costs run past that sum, the company issues an updated agreement requiring additional payment.

When the project has substantially completed the queue process, the company reviews the results with the customer, "including the project being assigned an energization date," and issues a Construction Letter of Agreement. The customer has 90 days to sign it. This is the agreement under which the company builds, and the report says "no significant capital investments are made until the customer executes this agreement." It "triggers cash deposit payments and 100% reimbursement of all costs incurred if the project is canceled before energization." The final stage of contracting is an Electric Service Agreement, issued "within one year of energization," close to the end of construction. Collateral requirements, which "were approved to become more stringent pursuant to a recent Commission ruling," are due to be paid before the customer's meter is set and its project is energized.

In the report's account, from the construction agreement on, the cost of a canceled project stays with the data center and not with the utility's other customers.

A Rate Class of Its Own

In its 2025 biennial base rate proceeding, the company proposed a new rate class for customers "with particularly high demand and load factor characteristics." The state commission approved the class and its tariff, called GS-5, which "will become effective on January 1, 2027." The approval came with contract terms that the report says are "designed to mitigate risks posed by speculative demand requests or situations where high-load customers otherwise would not fulfill the cost recovery obligations associated with utility investments made to accommodate their requests." Among them are enhanced deposit and collateral requirements, "an extended, 14-year contract term (inclusive of a four-year ramp period)," and minimum demand charges for distribution, transmission and generation.

The practical effect, the report says, is that high-load customers "will pay, on a monthly basis, the higher of their actual electric demand or a percentage of the demand for which they contracted." The charges will be sized at 85% of contracted demand for transmission and distribution, and 60% for generation. A high-load customer that ceases operations before the end of its contract "will incur exit fees equal to the minimum demand charges that would have accrued over the unexpired term." The approval also includes what the report calls "limited capacity reassignment provisions." A customer may cut its contracted demand by 20% with 36 months' notice and no exit fee, and by up to 50% "if the capacity can be reallocated to other customers."

Under these terms the size of a request becomes a commitment in its own right.

Contingent on Energization

The report also names a condition on the utility's own side. "There is a caveat: cost recovery is contingent on project energization." The company "must complete construction, set a meter, and energize a given customer before base rate recovery of the associated costs can begin." That would leave a window in which it could incur a liability if a project were canceled before energization, the report says, "but for the Construction Letter of Agreement (CLOA) requirement." That agreement requires deposits for long-lead items "such as transformers and switchgear, which must be ordered years in advance."

The commission's oversight of cost allocation and of other issues for high-load customers, the report says, "is ongoing." For the projects in the queue with no date yet, when does a date come?