2026-06-21 · FIPS 51153
Prince William's Digital Gateway lands in a tighter PJM
PWC's 2,100-acre rezoning was approved in late 2023. The grid it must connect to in 2026 is materially harder to reach.
In December 2023, the Prince William County Board of County Supervisors approved the Pageland-area "Digital Gateway" rezoning — an unusually large data-center entitlement adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield Park (Prince William BOCS).
Approval, however, is not energization. Every Gateway campus must clear PJM interconnection, and the PJM picture in the DOM zone has tightened materially since the vote. The 2025/26 RPM Base Residual Auction cleared at a record clearing price for the RTO (PJM 2025/26 Base Residual Auction results), and Dominion Energy's 2024 Integrated Resource Plan extends a "data-center high" load trajectory that has become impossible to politely ignore (Dominion 2024 IRP filing — Virginia SCC).
What this constrains
The Gateway's entitlement risk is now largely behind it. The remaining capacity risk is transmission build-out and queue throughput — both of which sit with PJM and Dominion, not the Board.
What to watch
- New PJM interconnection queue activity geocoded to PWC parcels (we track this on `/data-centers`).
- Dominion's next transmission line case at the SCC affecting the Gainesville/Haymarket corridor.
- Any court action stemming from litigation filed by preservation groups against the rezoning.