Virginia’s debate over data-center power demand and who should pay for the infrastructure is playing out alongside a very different kind of event in Washington. A themed cocktail party called Data After Dark is scheduled for Saturday, September 26, at PubKey in Penn Quarter. Axios reported that 900 people had been approved to attend, including tech workers, congressional staffers and people associated with the Trump administration. The party went viral after its organizers posted about it online, turning a planned bar night into a flashpoint in the national argument over AI’s electricity needs.
Tech journalist Jonas Du of Pirate Wires first planned the gathering at his Shaw rowhouse, but it outgrew the space, according to Axios. Du told the outlet the event was intended to celebrate American AI and computing dominance, and said he sees data centers as integral to American innovation. Axios describes PubKey DC as a crypto-bro clubhouse.
Guests will be able to order a Loudoun County Iced Tea, an SMR-tini, or a Closed Loop Spritz, and pose in a photo booth that turns partygoers into AI-generated images. The menu names are a wink at the very real fights over electricity infrastructure playing out just across the Potomac, where Virginia ratepayers are debating how to allocate the costs of the data center industry's explosive growth.
The Backlash the Party Is Answering
The party has drawn online criticism, including mockery calling it a loser party, Axios reported. Du dismissed many of the critics as not intellectually serious and framed the disagreement as a broader divide between people who fear the unknown and those who believe in its potential. He acknowledged that building data centers has potential downsides but said he believes those problems are solvable. According to Du, the party has already prompted interest in similar events in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Axios reported that the event’s sponsors include the '76 Crew, the Manhattan Institute, the Bitcoin Policy Institute and several AI companies.
Loudoun County's Real-World Stakes
The party’s cocktail names point to real disputes for residents near Data Center Alley. Loudoun County, Virginia, is home to 199 operating data centers, with another 117 in development. Dominion Energy has projected rising data-center electricity demand statewide, while Broadband Breakfast reports a proposed 14% residential rate increase for 2026. The proposal has intensified debate over how costs linked to data-center growth should be allocated among Virginia ratepayers.
What the Demand Forecasts and Rules Show
Regional forecasts point to a sharp increase in electricity demand, while distinguishing projected load growth from decisions about who pays for it. PJM Interconnection reported that its forecast peak load for the 2027/2028 Delivery Year was about 5,250 MW higher than its forecast for 2026/2027, with nearly 5,100 MW of the increase attributed to data-center demand. Separately, NOVEC’s forecast to PJM projected data-center summer peak loads in its service territory rising from roughly 1,400 MW in 2025 to more than 5,000 MW in summer 2030. These are forecasts; they do not determine how infrastructure costs should be divided among customers.
Virginia’s State Corporation Commission ordered Dominion Energy to develop a policy for directly assigning some transmission-infrastructure costs to data centers and other large-load users, Virginia Mercury reported; the order called for developing a policy, not approving a completed tariff. Siting disputes are a separate part of the debate: in Prince William County, neighbors won in court after the county approved a rezoning ordinance for the Digital Gateway data-center project in December 2023, NBC4 Washington reported.
Northern Virginia has also had to reckon with an inflated sense of its own importance. The region's data center corridor has long been associated with a claim that 70% of global internet traffic passes through its servers, but Cardinal News reported that claim is likely false; a separate estimate puts Northern Virginia's share of global data center capacity at about 22%, according to Cardinal News. The correction doesn't change the fact that Northern Virginia still holds the largest single concentration of data center capacity anywhere in the world.
Chasing Power Beyond the Grid
Tech companies have also explored nuclear power to meet AI computing demand. In 2024, Amazon Web Services and Dominion Energy signed a memorandum to explore an SMR near North Anna, according to Broadband Breakfast.
The SMR-tini on the upcoming menu is as much a punchline as a policy statement, poking fun at how central reactor deals have become to the industry's pitch that its power challenges are solvable with enough capital and engineering.
For now, the celebratory mood inside PubKey stands in sharp contrast to tougher conversations over electricity demand and rate concerns, where the costs of America's AI ambitions are reaching ordinary electric bills rather than cocktail napkins.
