Energy
Data Centers Now Need a Reactor’s Worth of Power, Dominion Says
- Needs of a new data campus can equal a nuclear plant’s output
- AI, EVs and new factories are driving up US electricity demand
A power substation near a data center in Ashburn, Virginia.
Photographer: Nathan Howard/BloombergData center developers in Northern Virginia are asking utility Dominion Energy Inc. for as much power as several nuclear reactors can generate, in the latest sign of how artificial intelligence is helping drive up electricity demand.
Dominion regularly fields requests from developers whose planned data center campuses need as much as “several gigawatts” of electricity, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue said Thursday during the company’s first-quarter earnings call. A gigawatt is roughly the output of a nuclear reactor and can power 750,000 homes.