The Maryland Public Service Commission has approved Potomac Edison's request to connect the Doubs substation to a planned substation on the Quantum Loophole data center campus.

First reported by the Frederick News-Post, the FirstEnergy subsidiary will be able to connect the Doubs substation to Rowan Digital Infrastructure's proposed substation at its Bauxite data center site.

To do so, Potomac Edison will construct a new switching station, and two existing 230-kilovolt transmission lines will be looped between the two.

In order to do so, Potomac had to acquire a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity from the Maryland PSC to guarantee that the move would not hurt the safety and reliability of the electricity distribution system.

This applies to all generating stations with a capacity greater than 2MW, though the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act of 2024 redefined generating stations to exclude facilities that produce backup power to data centers or places that provide health care.

Potomac applied for and has been granted a waiver from the PSC so as to start construction by September 2 and meet Rowan's data center development timeline.

The entire project is expected to cost around $33m: $5.6 million will go toward transmission line work, and $27.3 million will go toward the construction of the switching station.

Rowan Digital Infrastructure is set to contribute $2.17m towards the cost.

While the waiver was granted, commissioner Bonnie Suchman opposed the decision. Suchman said: “The upgrades are only coming because of this new data center. I think the fact that ratepayers are covering the lion’s share of a project that’s going to benefit a single customer is part of my concern.”

Joey Chen, an attorney representing FirstEnergy, conceded: "I cannot look you in the eye and tell you that there is an immediate reliability need right now.

“The project as we’ve designed it here is needed in order to protect and ensure that there’s going to be reliability sufficient to support the anticipated load that’s going to be coming onto that area.”

PJM Interconnection, which coordinates the movement of electricity through Maryland, predicted in its 2024 Load Forecast Report that energy use in the region would increase from 800,0000 gigawatt-hours in 2024 to 1.1 million by 2039, much of which was put down to the development of data centers.

The Quantum Loophole campus has had a complex journey to development.

While Rowan is currently set to develop on the Maryland campus, a previous development faced notable obstacles on the site.

Quantum’s first tenant, Aligned Data Centers, wanted 168 diesel generators capable of delivering 504MW for its full build on the site. The company pulled out after only being granted a provisional exemption for up to 70MW of diesel generators. Aligned had planned to build 3.3 million sq ft (306,580 sqm) of data center capacity.

It was following this that the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act of 2024 went through, amending regulations in the state for data center firms.

Rowan is looking to develop four single-story buildings totaling 777,150 sq ft (72,200 sqm) across 151 acres, along with an on-site substation from Potomac Edison. In May 2024, the company proposed to expand this significantly, with images suggesting Project II, to the northeast of the original site, would span four buildings. Project III, located to the north of the original site and west of Project II, looks set to span three buildings.