The company tasked with building a controversial high-powered electric transmission line in northern Maryland released details of its preferred alignment Friday, one of the first formal steps in a fraught process that has mobilized vocal opposition from landowners, farmers, environmentalists and political leaders in three counties.
The proposed Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project would bring power from the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania through an existing Baltimore Gas & Electric transmission line right-of-way in northern Baltimore County, then through Carroll County and into an existing power station in southern Frederick County. Electricity from that substation is then expected to go under the Potomac River to Northern Virginia, where several large data centers need extra power for their operations.
PJM, which operates the electric grid in Maryland and a dozen other states, plus the District of Columbia, is seeking the higher-powered transmission line to compensate for an anticipated shortage of electric transmission into the region, due to the scheduled closures of coal-burning plants and the growing demand for power from data centers and other sources. The energy deficit in Maryland is projected to grow unless additional infrastructure like the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project is built, PJM has asserted.