15-02-2025
Aligned breaks ground on data center project in Frederick County; approved to build generators
Aligned Data Centers has broken ground on its first data center — a 72-megawatt facility — in Frederick County.
The company also received a permit from the Maryland Department of the Environment on Jan. 30 to construct over 170 emergency generators with a combined capacity of 508 megawatts for its planned facilities.
One megawatt can power an average household for a little over a month, according to solar software company RatedPower.
Aligned, based in Texas, is one of the companies that will build at Quantum Frederick, a planned data center campus on the former site of the Alcoa Eastalco aluminum smelting plant near Adamstown.
Data centers store computing machines and server systems needed for cloud-based services and require lots of power and water to stay online 24/7 and cool their equipment.
The buildings also require backup generators in the case of an emergency outage.
Aligned spokesperson Joanna Soucy said on Thursday that the company held a ceremonial groundbreaking at the project site in December.
She said the company had no further comment on a construction timeline.
Quantum Frederick is being developed by TPG and Catellus Development Corporation. The campus will be connected to the 'data center alley' in Virginia's Loudoun County by a 40-mile-long fiber optic ring called the QLoop.
In 2024, Loudoun County had 43 million square feet of data centers.
Two companies — Aligned and Rowan Digital Infrastructure — have announced their intent to build facilities on the Quantum Frederick campus.
In May 2023, Aligned received conditional site-plan approval from the Frederick County Planning Commission to build a data center with 42 diesel backup generators.
That same month, the company applied to the Maryland Public Service Commission asking for an exemption from obtaining a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) to install 168 three-megawatt emergency diesel generators — a combined total of 504 megawatts.
A CPCN 'provides authority for a person to construct or modify a new generating station or high-voltage transmission lines,' according to the Public Service Commission's website.
These generators included the 42 generators from the approved data center site plan and generators for three future data centers on the Quantum Frederick campus.
The Public Service Commission denied Aligned the CPCN exemption, granting it authority to only install generators with a combined capacity of 70 megawatts.
In October 2023, after it was denied the exemption, Aligned abandoned its Frederick County project, stating in a letter that the commission's decision may have 'sent a negative — and perhaps fatal — signal to the hoped-for data center industry in Maryland.'
After a law passed in Maryland in 2024 allowing certain entities, including data centers, to bypass obtaining a CPCN to install emergency generators, Aligned announced it planned to proceed again with its project on Quantum Loophole's campus.
Aligned's LinkedIn post on Feb. 3 announcing the groundbreaking said the data center under construction is called IAD-04.
Data Center Dynamics, a data center publication, reported on Feb. 5 that the data center is a 72-megawatt facility.
In response to a request asking about IAD-04 as a 72-megawatt data center, Soucy said the company had no further comment regarding project specifics.
Aligned's generators
The Maryland Department of the Environment also granted a construction permit to Aligned on Jan. 30, allowing the company to build 172 emergency diesel generators.
The permit allows aligned to build 168 three-megawatt generators and four one-megawatt generators, a combined total power capacity of 508 megawatts.
Aligned applied for the construction permit on July 1. Any operation or equipment that creates emissions to the outside air must receive an air quality permit from MDE before construction, according to a document about air quality construction permits.
Fuel-burning equipment — such as the diesel-powered generators Aligned wants to install — fall under emission-discharging operations that need this permit.
Each of Aligned's four planned data center buildings will have 42 three-megawatt generators and a one-megawatt generator.
For the first data center building, the expected operation date for the generators will be in 2026, according to the permit.
The Department of the Environment held a public meeting on Dec. 11 to hear comments on the draft permit for Aligned.
During that meeting, Air Quality Permits Program Manager Suna Yi Sariscak said the generators will only be able to be operated for testing, maintenance and emergency purposes, and they must use ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel, according to the permit.
The Department of the Environment included answers to several questions people asked about the generators in a document on its final decision on Aligned's construction permit application.
On Nov. 1, Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater sent a letter to the state requesting that it require Aligned to use Tier 4 or higher generators.
'Tier 4 generators are proven to emit less air pollution and create less noise, protecting both the environment and the residents of Frederick County,' Fitzwater wrote.
To meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Tier 4 standards, the engines must have advanced emission control technologies, according to the agency's website.
According to the document on the Department of the Environment's final decision, the three-megawatt generators are Tier 2, but they will have added pollution controls 'to reduce emissions to levels similar to using Tier 4 engines.'
