Prince William County supervisors are set to vote again on a contested plan to expand Dominion Energy's Vint Hill Substation near Nokesville, reconsidering a proposal that would turn the existing site into a much larger, taller facility built to help power the region's booming data center industry. The vote is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22, months after the board pushed the decision down the road amid unresolved technical questions.
The application, known as Special Use Permit SUP2025-00009, calls for expanding Dominion's existing substation on a 23.4-acre site at 13405 Vint Hill Road into a 500-kilovolt gas-insulated switching facility, according to the Prince William County Development Application Processing Schedule. The proposal includes two new buildings standing 30 feet tall. As reported by FOX 5 DC, the board will vote on whether to approve Dominion's plan to expand the substation to meet power demand driven in part by data centers.
This is not the board's first pass at the question. On June 23, supervisors voted 5-2 to defer a decision on the permit for 90 days, a delay that set up this week's reconsideration, per Bristow Beat. Brentsville District Supervisor Tom Gordy had initiated the deferral motion, stating at the time that Dominion had not provided sufficient technical details for the board to act.
A Bigger Transmission Corridor Behind the Substation
A Bigger Transmission Corridor Behind the Substation The substation upgrade does not stand alone. Dominion has also proposed the Nokesville–Bristow Electric Transmission Project. Dominion states the project is needed to maintain grid reliability as development expands near Innovation Park, and the company plans to formally file its regulatory application for the project with the Virginia State Corporation Commission in the fourth quarter of this year.
Neighbors Organize, Point to Fauquier Precedent
Opposition to the Vint Hill plan has been coordinated by grassroots groups including the Coalition to Protect Prince William County and the Civic Association of Brentsville & Surrounding Areas, with residents protesting at Dominion public-input events. Residents argue that rural and residential communities near Nokesville and Braemar are absorbing the visual and environmental cost of infrastructure built primarily to serve industrial data centers.
Activists have repeatedly pointed to a decision just across the county line as a model for what they want Prince William to do. The Fauquier County Planning Commission previously voted to reject a similar Dominion substation expansion in the adjacent Vint Hill area, an action the Coalition to Protect Prince William County has cited in urging supervisors toward an outright denial.
Who Pays for the Grid, and When Courts Get Involved
State regulators have tried to address one piece of the underlying cost dispute. Virginia established a new, separate rate class requiring high-volume power customers such as hyperscale data centers to pay higher electricity rates covering the cost of interconnected grid upgrades, according to CoStar. Even so, several Northern Virginia residents report notable surges in their own monthly electric bills.
The debate also unfolds in the shadow of a bigger, recent defeat for data center developers in the county. The 2,100-acre Digital Gateway proposal was voided by Virginia courts earlier this year before developers Compass Datacenters and QTS officially withdrew their appeals, a saga Hoodline previously reported cost the county $1.7 million in legal defense fees. That collapse showed how potent community litigation can be against large-scale digital infrastructure projects in western Prince William County.
The stakes extend well beyond one substation. Prince William and neighboring Loudoun County are part of Virginia's data-center market, underscoring the state's role in the global data-center boom and the growth in commercial electrical load driving projects like Vint Hill. Whether the board grants approval with stricter buffer and undergrounding conditions, pushes for another deferral, or issues a full denial ahead of Dominion's fourth-quarter filing with state regulators remains an open question heading into Tuesday's vote.
