Dominion’s October Demand Rose 12.2% as PJM Revisits Data-Center Growth

Dominion’s average electricity demand reached 15.21 GW in October, up 12.2 percent from the same month in 2025. AEP’s average rose 6.3 percent; the Mid-Atlantic’s was nearly unchanged. Ask the Grid’s comparison covers every hour of both months, showing how differently demand is growing across PJM’s operating areas.

Those differences give a physical backdrop to the independent data-center forecast Charles River Associates presented to PJM on November 2. Its softer supply-constraint scenario reaches 30 GW of data-center demand in 2030. The gap against its reliability-constrained deployment view reaches approximately 11.5 GW that year. Which projects receive power depends partly on which supply projects arrive.

Dominion’s increase appears throughout the average October day. At 3 a.m. Eastern, preliminary load averaged 13.58 GW, up 1.57 GW from October 2025. Its mean load was higher at every clock hour. The change therefore reaches beyond the evening’s highest-demand hours.

These are total operating-area loads. Weather, customer growth, industrial activity and data centers can all contribute; this comparison does not separate their effects. Selecting the other areas reveals why a single regional growth rate can conceal different local planning questions.

PJM’s November 4 queue snapshot lists 21 generation entries totaling 3.37 GW under construction in AEP’s transmission footprint, and 24 totaling 4.92 GW in Dominion’s. Separate groups remain in engineering and procurement or are already partly in service while construction continues.

Technology changes what those figures mean for reliability. Solar-only projects account for 65 percent of AEP’s under-construction requested MW and 54 percent of Dominion’s. Requested capacity describes the interconnection proposal; dependable capacity during a particular peak depends on the resource, its operating conditions and PJM’s accreditation rules. These projects also serve the wider system rather than a designated set of data centers.

CRA screened utility submissions for agreements, permitting progress, timing and local restrictions, then combined the project view with national demand assumptions. It also changed supply assumptions: active Reliability Resource Initiative projects receive their full listed capacity, four expedited projects add about 2.6 GW of installed capacity in 2029, and Homer City is assumed to begin operating in late 2029.

That makes the 11.5 GW difference a scenario result about demand and available power in 2030. PJM’s July auction produced a separate 6.83 GW accredited-capacity shortfall for 2028/2029. The two figures use different horizons and methods; they cannot be added or treated as successive readings of one shortage.

For developers and planners, the next useful evidence is project delivery: signed load commitments, construction milestones, operating dates and accredited supply in the zones where demand is rising. PJM’s next long-term forecast, expected in January, will show how the new information enters the regional planning baseline.