Dominion’s SCC Filing: 70 GW of Large-Load Requests — Nearly Triple the DOM Zone Peak — Feed the Transmission Fight

RICHMOND — Before another 500 kV or 765 kV tower rises on a western Loudoun ridge, read the queue math Dominion just put in front of the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

In Case No. PUR-2026-00011 — an application for approval of Dominion Energy Virginia’s large-load connection queue process standards — the company says it has seen an “unprecedented level of growth in both the size and number of requests for delivery points” in recent years. Roughly 25,000 megawatts of large-load delivery-point requests already progressing through the queue have assigned projected connection dates between now and December 31, 2031. As of December 31, 2025, Dominion had assigned batches to an additional approximately 45,000 MW under the large-load process and is studying those requests for projected dates.

In total, about 70,000 MW of large-load delivery-point requests are advancing through the company’s queue. That requested load is nearly triple the Dominion Zone’s current all-time peak of 24,678 MW, recorded January 23, 2025. Volume keeps climbing: Dominion reports receiving, on average, about ten new large-load delivery-point requests per month, representing an additional 2,000–3,000 MW of requested load.

The standards apply to delivery-point requests associated with large loads of approximately 100 MW or more serving data-center customers within the DOM Zone. Dominion manages requests in a queue organized by batches of roughly ten delivery-point requests per batch, each batch typically representing two to three gigawatts of aggregate load. Requests are submitted and tracked on the company’s Delivery Point Exchange online platform. Four stages structure the process: Project Initiation, Project Feasibility, Project Development, and Project Execution. The company says the framework promotes transparency, aligns requests with system availability, and aims for predictable energization sequencing for electric distribution companies and their customers.

The filing is not a casual white paper. It answers the SCC’s November 25, 2025 Final Order in Case No. PUR-2025-00058, which directed Dominion to file its new large-load interconnection queue process with supporting testimony and encouraged options for faster interconnection of large loads that meet readiness criteria such as site readiness, proximity to generation, and flexibility.

Western Loudoun activists reading the same docket draw a harder line. Theresa Ghiorzi’s June 2026 letter to federal officials — citing PUR-2026-00011 among her attachments — argues the queue reveals how weakly screened speculative load can still drive “reliability” transmission. She contends developers need not own the property (an option can suffice), need not have required zoning finished, need not have lawsuits concluded, and face little evaluation of financial means to build and operate; in her telling, a plat and a refundable deposit get Dominion engineering underway, planned in 2–3 GW batches on a first-in basis without grouping insight by load delivery area. Those characterizations are Ghiorzi’s advocacy reading of the process, not Dominion’s application prose — but they explain why landowners treat the 70 GW headline as political evidence, not just utility housekeeping.

PJM’s last several RTEP cycles, Ghiorzi notes, have answered Data Center Alley’s demand with another set of lines into the alley — three 500 kV projects, then 765 kV, then an HVDC line from the south. Dominion’s own Window 1 shortlist now includes a ~$4.8 billion Heritage-to-Mosby underground HVDC. FirstEnergy’s MARL and Valley Link North still threaten a 550-to-650-foot overhead corridor through Frederick, Clarke, and western Loudoun. The queue filing is the common denominator: if tens of gigawatts of data-center delivery points are real enough to plan, someone will build wires; if many are speculative, ratepayers and residual landowners are being asked to finance steel (or trenches) for options that may never energize.

Across Virginia, the majority of votes placing data centers into zoning maps and by-right pathways have come primarily from Democrats. Loudoun’s Democratic-majority board spent years expanding by-right and rezone pathways that filled Dominion’s Delivery Point Exchange. PUR-2026-00011 is Dominion asking the SCC to bless a more formal pipe for that boom. Opponents want the same numbers used to force cost allocation onto the campuses, segregate data-center load from ordinary reliability planning, and prefer underground HVDC inside existing easements over PATH-retread corridors. The Commission’s queue case will not site Valley Link. It will decide how transparent — and how gated — the megawatt claims behind the next transmission fight have to be.

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,