Virginia Data Centers

The term “Data Center Alley” refers to the dense cluster of campuses along the Loudoun County Technology Corridor, centered on Ashburn. This corridor exists because of MAE-East, one of the original internet exchange points established in the early 1990s near Dulles Airport. Once carriers co-located there, network effects made the location self-reinforcing — today, roughly 70% of the world’s internet traffic passes through Northern Virginia daily. Growth is now spilling south into Prince William County and west toward Fauquier County, while Henrico County near Richmond has emerged as a secondary hub with lower land costs and direct fiber routes to coastal submarine cable landings.

31 Virginia counties have at least one tracked data center. Loudoun County dominates with 217 facilities, but the geographic footprint is expanding — Culpeper, Spotsylvania, and Fauquier counties have all seen new development since 2024.

Amazon Web Services alone operates dozens of facilities across Northern Virginia, making it both the largest operator and the largest electricity consumer in the region. Microsoft and Google are close behind, each investing billions in multi-building campuses. The colocation market is anchored by Equinix, QTS (Blackstone), Digital Realty, and CloudHQ, which lease space to hundreds of enterprise tenants.

Several Virginia projects exceed 1 GW of planned capacity — each rivaling the output of a nuclear reactor. The scale reflects the shift from traditional colocation to hyperscale AI training, where a single building can draw more power than a small city. Louisa County leads with 8,500 MW of tracked capacity.

Despite vocal opposition in Loudoun and Prince William counties — where residents cite noise, aesthetics, and grid strain — Virginia’s construction pipeline remains the largest in the nation. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google each have multi-billion-dollar campus expansions underway. Dominion Energy has committed over $2 billion in dedicated transmission infrastructure to serve the corridor, and the utility recently created a dedicated rate class (GS-5) for data center customers drawing more than 25 MW. See our moratorium tracker for the latest restrictions.

Virginia’s data center boom has triggered billions in Dominion Energy transmission upgrades whose costs flow into regulated rates. The utility has proposed dedicated data center tariffs to insulate residential customers, but critics argue that existing cost allocation already spreads infrastructure expenses across all ratepayers. Virginia’s JLARC study found data centers are currently paying their fair share but warned that could change without structural reforms. Industrial electricity in NoVA averages 7–8¢/kWh. Compare current Virginia electricity rates to see how your area is affected.