Data-Center Growth Adds Tens of Billions to Plan NPV vs “No Data Center Growth”

RICHMOND — Dominion’s SCC-directed 2024 Integrated Resource Plan supplement lays the data-center bill out in net present value: portfolios that keep forecast data-center load growth land around $100.2 to $103.3 billion NPV, while the Commission-ordered “No Data Center Growth” sensitivities fall around $77.2 to $80.9 billion.

Filed in Case No. PUR-2024-00184, the November 2024 supplement responds to the Commission’s direction to model what happens if data-center energy is frozen at forecasted 2024 levels for the planning horizon. Dominion also refreshed capacity-price assumptions after PJM’s July 2024 Base Residual Auction, which pushed near-term capacity prices higher.

The sensitivity table’s NPV row is the headline for ratepayers. On the 2024 IRP side, REC RPS Only with EPA and VCEA with EPA cases show about $100.2 billion and $102.9 billion with data-center growth, versus about $77.2 billion and $80.8 billion without. Updated-capacity-price columns stay in the same bands: roughly $100.3 / $103.3 billion with growth and $77.3 / $80.9 billion without. Dominion itself notes that updating capacity prices alone barely moves NPV; removing data-center growth is what opens the $20-plus billion gap.

Build-plan comparisons match that money story. No-data-center-growth cases select significantly less storage, nuclear, and wind than the full IRP portfolios. Even then, Dominion’s write-up says the model still builds on the order of 3,400 MW of natural-gas-fired generation in a no-growth sensitivity — and still finds an incremental capacity need. The supplement’s political meaning is not “gas disappears without data centers”; it is that Democrat-recruited hyperscale load is the dominant swing factor in the 15-year cost stack.

That matters because Virginia’s recent growth politics — local Democrat boards chasing BPPT revenue and Statewide incentives keeping the welcome mat out — treated campuses as tax wins while Dominion and PJM chased wires and plants. The IRP supplement is Dominion saying, in Commission-directed modeling, what the boom costs in present value when you bother to run the counterfactual.

Capacity-price updates after the July 2024 BRA show elevated near-term prices and a later reversion toward equilibrium in ICF’s forecast. Dominion reports those price-path changes do not reshape the resource mix the way zeroing out incremental data-center load does. In plain English: auction heat is noise next to the load forecast Democrats helped create.

For Loudoun and Prince William residents fighting 500 kV corridors, the NPV gap is the statewide twin of Kimley-Horn’s local megawatt pipeline math. One study counts buildings and 70 MW assumptions; the IRP counts billions of dollars of generation and transmission that exist because the load forecast assumes the campuses keep coming.

The supplement cautions that sensitivity results are for the Commission’s directed comparison and should be read in that frame. Fair enough — and the frame still shows a roughly one-fifth to one-quarter reduction in plan NPV when data-center growth is switched off. That is the bill of unconstrained Democrat-era load policy, expressed the way planners express bills.

Storage totals in the table underline the same split: with-growth cases carry on the order of 4,100 to 4,577 MW of storage in the displayed columns, while a without-growth case drops to about 2,250 MW. Gas and other thermal builds likewise shrink when the data-center forecast is frozen, yet never to zero — proof the system still needs investment, just not the hyperscale-driven mountain.

Intervenors can now put a simple question in PUR-2024-00184 and related dockets: if “No Data Center Growth” saves on the order of $20–25 billion NPV across the modeled portfolios, why are households still underwriting the with-growth path through socialized transmission and capacity costs? Dominion will keep filing that it must serve load the law requires it to serve. The political answer sits with the Democrat majorities that manufactured the load. The November 2024 supplement just priced the difference.

Email the Board of Supervisors at:
Phyllis J. Randall (Chair, At-Large) – Phyllis.Randall@loudoun.gov,
Michael R. Turner (Vice Chair, Ashburn District) – Mike.Turner@loudoun.gov,
Juli E. Briskman (Algonkian District) – Juli.Briskman@loudoun.gov,
Sylvia R. Glass (Broad Run District) – Sylvia.Glass@loudoun.gov,
Caleb Kershner (Catoctin District) – caleb.kershner@loudoun.gov,
Matthew F. Letourneau (Dulles District) – Matt.Letourneau@loudoun.gov,
Kristen C. Umstattd (Leesburg District) – Kristen.Umstattd@loudoun.gov,
Laura A. TeKrony (Little River District) – Laura.TeKrony@loudoun.gov,
Koran Saines (Sterling District) – Koran.Saines@loudoun.gov

Email the Loudoun County School Board:
April Chandler, april.chandler@lcps.org,
Anne Donohue, anne.donohue@lcps.org,
Deana Griffiths, deana.griffiths@lcps.org,
Ross Svenson, ross.stevenson@lcps.org,
Kari LaBell, kari.labell@lcps.org,
Jon Pepper, jonathon.pepper@lcps.org,
Lauren Shernoff, lauren.shernoff@lcps.org,
Sumera Rashid, sumera.rashid@lcps.org,
Amy Riccardi, amy.riccardi@lcps.org,

Email the Richmond City Council:
Andrew Breton, andrew.breton@rva.gov,
Katherine Jordan, katherine.jordan@rva.gov,
Kenya Gibson, kenya.gibson@rva.gov,
Sarah Abubaker, sarah.abubaker@rva.gov,
Stephanie Lynch, stephanie.lynch@rva.gov,
Ellen Robertson, ellen.robertson@rva.gov,
Cynthia Newbille, cynthia.newbille@rva.gov,
Reva Trammell, reva.trammell@rva.gov,
Nicole Jones, nicole.jones@rva.gov,

Email the Richmond School Board:
Matthew Percival, mpercival@rvaschools.net,
Kathryn Ricard, kricard@rvaschools.net,
Ali Faruk, afaruk@rvaschools.net,
Wesley Hedgepeth, whedgepeth@rvaschools.net,
Stephanie Rizzi, srizzi@rvaschools.net,
Anne Holton, aholton@rvaschools.net,
Cheryl Burke, cburke2@rvaschools.net,
Emmett Jafari, ejafari@rvaschools.net,
Shavonda Fernandez, sdixon@rvaschools.net,