RICHMOND, Virginia, June 22, 2026, 19:02 EDT
Dominion Energy traded near its 52-week high Monday. Investors kept an eye on Richmond-based Dominion as it tries to tap Virginia data-center demand for regulated earnings growth and waits to see if NextEra Energy will finish its planned takeover. Shares slipped 0.54% to close at $68.04 after hitting an intraday high of $69.19. The 52-week high on Google Finance was $69.28.
Dominion is drawing notice now since it’s not seen just as a slow-growth utility anymore. Its Virginia service area covers the world’s biggest data center hub. PJM Interconnection is forecasting the Dominion zone to see the biggest jump in summer peak demand from 2026 to 2030, mostly on new data-center load, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The market is tracking in the same direction. Reuters Events said Monday digital infrastructure investors are snapping up power developers as U.S. data-center electricity demand is set to jump to 66 gigawatts by 2027, up from 31 gigawatts in 2025. One gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. Developers are now trying to secure power supply and skip grid delays when possible.
Dominion’s bigger capital plan out to 2030, focused on new generation, transmission and other infrastructure, shifts the investment outlook for the stock, Simply Wall St said Monday. The key question is if that spending goes into rate base, where regulators sign off on returns, or if it just adds to the balance sheet and puts pressure to raise more debt and equity.
Dominion put out first-quarter operating earnings of 95 cents a share on $5.019 billion in operating revenue. The company kept its 2026 operating earnings guidance at $3.45 to $3.69 a share.
Dominion’s data-center business is the focus here. Reuters said in May the company had almost 51 gigawatts of contracted data-center load as of March, up 2.5 gigawatts since December. In a January PJM filing, Stan Blackwell, who runs Dominion’s data-center practice, reported serving a 2025 coincident peak of 4 gigawatts for the sector, and projected data-center demand would reach 6,526 megawatts by 2030. Coincident peak refers to usage hitting its high at the same time as the grid does.
NextEra’s pending buyout is hanging over Dominion shares. NextEra and Dominion said May 18 they will merge in an all-stock deal, giving Dominion owners 0.8138 NextEra shares for each Dominion share. Dominion holders would end up with about 25.5% of the new company. The combined utility would have roughly 10 million accounts, 110 gigawatts of generation and go by the NextEra name.
NextEra CEO John Ketchum put the deal down to size, saying “scale matters more than ever” and the bigger group can “buy, build, finance and operate more efficiently.” Dominion’s Robert Blue also pointed to “scale and balance sheet” as key to getting generation, transmission and grid investments done. PR Newswire
Analysts keep looking at Dominion more as a play on whether the deal goes through than a classic utility trade. Andrew Bischof, equity analyst at Morningstar, said the deal gives NextEra a chance to tap “Dominion’s expertise and relationships” in ramping up its data-center work, according to Inside Climate News. That puts Dominion in with peers like Duke Energy and Southern Co., but with the added twist that NextEra is already its buyer. Inside Climate News
But there are clear risks. The deal still needs approval from shareholders and several regulators—FERC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plus state utility commissions in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Dominion, in its filing, also pointed to threats from fast data-center growth, including risks from demand concentration, permitting, and regulatory hurdles for new projects.
FERC is already stepping in. The regulator last week told grid operators to either defend or change rules around connecting big energy users to the grid—mostly data centers needing lots of power. FERC Chair Laura Swett said it’s the U.S.’s “biggest priority.” The order also aims to keep regular customers from picking up the tab for major new loads. Reuters
Affordability could set the bar for how much of Dominion’s data-center growth ends up in shareholders’ pockets. Ari Peskoe, who runs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, told Inside Climate News, “mergers are not about consumers; they’re about shareholders.” Marissa Paslick Gillett, a former Connecticut utility regulator, said a bigger utility could turn into a harder-to-control “behemoth.” Inside Climate News
Right now, the stock is caught between two trades: the regulated grid expansion in the top data-center market and an M&A deal that still hangs on approvals, customer safeguards, and how fast power demand actually hits. The next issue isn’t just if Virginia needs more juice. It’s about who will shell out for it, and who gets paid back.
