Richmond / Central Virginia.
Central Virginia posted the fastest growth of any US market in 2025 — from ~100 MW to over 800 MW in six months — with more than 9 GW of pipeline behind it. It is NoVA's overflow valve, on NoVA's rules: Dominion power, VOSH enforcement, and DPOR journeyman and master licensing.
The market right now
Henrico's White Oak Technology Park anchors the east side; Google's $9B three-campus program is rising in Chesterfield; Hanover, Caroline and Louisa counties hold the land-bank plays. Dominion's interconnection queue — not land — sets the tempo, which means campuses energize in phases, sometimes years apart, with construction and operations overlapping the whole way.
- Richmond-area capacity jumped from ~100 MW to 800+ MW in H1 2025 — the fastest data center growth of any US market (CRE Daily/Bisnow, 2025)
- Over 9 GW of colocation and hyperscale development is planned or underway across the region (CRE Daily, 2025)
- Google is investing $9B in three Chesterfield campuses, with construction underway at Bermuda Hundred (Richmond BizSense, 2025; VPM, 2026)
- QTS is pursuing a 1,100-acre, 17-building expansion of its Henrico White Oak hub (Richmond BizSense, 2026)
- Virginia SCC approved a new Dominion rate class for high-load data center users in Nov 2025 (Virginia Mercury, 2025)
- Amazon has proposed campuses on 1,600+ acres across multiple Richmond-area counties (CRE Daily, 2025)
Every campus on the map
Solid copper markers are operating campuses; white markers are under construction; dashed outlines are announced or planned. Locations are approximate campus-level centroids compiled from public sources — county records, operator announcements, and market reports — as of August 2026. Dense clusters are grouped. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.
Operating campuses mapped
- QTS Richmond mega data center — QTS · Sandston, Henrico Co. ~1.3M sq ft former Qimonda semiconductor plant converted to data center use
- QTS White Oak campus — QTS · White Oak Technology Park, Henrico. Multi-building hyperscale campus; RIC5 build tracked on the federal FAST-41 permitting dashboard (permits.performance.gov)
- Meta Henrico — Meta · White Oak Technology Park, Sandston. Hyperscale campus, expanded in multiple phases since 2017 (DPR Construction)
- Capital One Meadowville — Capital One · Meadowville Technology Park, Chester. Enterprise data center anchoring Chesterfield's Meadowville tech corridor
Under construction & planned
- Google Chesterfield trio — Google · Bermuda Hundred / Upper Magnolia Green / Watkins Centre · under construction. $9B across 3 campuses; 300+ acres at Bermuda Hundred underway, 880 acres at Magnolia Green (Virginia Business, 2025)
- QTS White Oak expansion — QTS · Eastern Henrico Co · planned. 17 buildings on 1,100 acres; residents pushing back (Richmond BizSense, 2026)
- Tract Hanover Technology Park — Tract · Hanover Co, near Ashland · planned. 1,200 acres acquired 2024; rezoning approved for data center campus (Tract/GRP, 2024)
- Mountain Road data center — Undisclosed (Covington project) · Hanover Co · planned. Hanover planning commission recommended approval Apr 2026 (VPM, 2026)
- Chirisa Digital Drive — Chirisa Technology Parks · Chesterfield Co · planned. $2B, 104-acre project; power delivery targeted within a few years (Virginia Business, 2025)
- CleanArc Caroline campus — CleanArc Data Centers · Caroline Co (north of Hanover) · planned. $3B campus announced Nov 2025 (Virginia Business, 2025)
- EdgeCore Louisa campus — EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure · Louisa Co · planned. $17B campus announced June 2025 (Virginia Business, 2025)
Power
Service territory: Dominion Energy Virginia.
- Dominion is building new high-voltage lines to serve a proposed ~900 MW data center in Chesterfield County (DCD)
- SCC approved the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center gas peaker plus a Dominion rate hike and new data center rate class, Nov 2025 (Virginia Mercury)
- Interconnection timing, not land, is the binding constraint; multi-year Dominion queue drives phased energization across campuses
The regulatory picture
Enforcement. Virginia is a state-plan state: VOSH, administered by the VA Dept of Labor and Industry (DOLI), enforces its own construction and electrical standards, including Virginia-unique rules.
Licensing. Virginia requires statewide DPOR tradesman licenses — journeyman and master electrician cards — working under a licensed electrical (ELE) contractor; among the stricter East Coast regimes.
Also in play. VA's data center sales tax exemption is the state's largest incentive; Henrico tightened data center zoning in 2025 after resident pushback, while Hanover approved Tract's 1,200-acre rezoning (GRP, 2024).
What it means for the work
Phased energization is the recurring hazard pattern: the crew that built section one comes back to build section two beside it, except now section one is live. The mental model has to flip from construction site to operating facility overnight, and that flip is a training event, not a memo.
Fastest-growing US market means thousands of electricians new to mission-critical work energizing 9 GW of pipeline under VOSH state-plan enforcement
Phased campus energization (QTS, Google) puts construction crews adjacent to live 230kV/500kV interconnections and operating data halls
New on-site and grid generation — Chesterfield gas peaker, large substations — adds utility-boundary and switching-hazard exposure
Virginia's DPOR journeyman/master licensing creates a ready audience for NFPA 70E refreshers tied to license-holder CE culture
Market context is half the picture. The other half is the decision walk — the nine questions the 2027 edition asks before anyone opens a door on energized gear. Run it against the task, then check the room pages in the Data Center Application Series.
NFPA 70E classes taught on the 2027 edition, against data center topology, about 55 times a year — live virtual weekly, and private onsite days in Richmond run against your one-lines for crews of 15 or more.