A new power line is coming to Maryland to largely fuel nearby data centers, and this week marks a key deadline for residents to weigh in.
The high-voltage cable, called the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL), would span 107 miles from Pennsylvania, running through West Virginia and Maryland’s Garrett and Allegany counties. The line ends in Frederick County, Virginia, which neighbors Loudoun County — the data center capital of the world.
“At the moment, it’s at least not clear to me that this is the cheapest way to resolve reliability problems or that it would provide net positive benefits to Maryland ratepayers.”
Benjamin Hobbs, Johns Hopkins University
MARL is part of PJM’s “Baseline Reliability Project” series aimed at upgrading the transmission system to meet growing electricity demand, caused in part by the high power needs for AI data centers.
Residents in Garrett County are worried the project will diminish the area’s natural beauty and hurt local farm owners, according to Mark Stutzman, communications director at Engage Mountain Maryland, a local environmental advocacy organization.
The entire route will affect 388 properties, per Stutzman, which can be taken by eminent domain if the project is approved, though he’s not sure how many of these will be Maryland farms.
NextEra Energy, the project’s developer, said it has engaged with stakeholders throughout its development process.
“Our proposed route reflects extensive community input,” a NextEra spokesperson wrote in an email. “We hosted eight open houses along the proposed route where nearly 1,200 attendees interacted with our team.”
Residents can participate in the state approval process by submitting a petition to intervene to the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) by Apr. 3. A pre-hearing conference to review those petitions is scheduled for Apr. 9 at the commission’s hearing room in downtown Baltimore.
Cost debates and environmental impact
PJM Interconnection approved MARL in December 2023. The grid operator manages the energy market across 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states, but it still requires approvals from state regulators. NextEra Energy filed its application with the PSC at the end of January.
At its announcement day in 2023, PJM indicated that MARL and the rest of the project series will serve increasing power demand from data centers and offset the impact of sunsetting power plants.
The line will connect to a substation in Allegany County, which converts high-voltage energy to distribution for homes and businesses, a NextEra Energy spokesperson said.
Bringing cheaper energy west to east has been a strategy of PJM’s for quite some time, according to Benjamin Hobbs, a professor of environmental management at Johns Hopkins University who advised PJM on its pricing model in the past.
While PJM identified MARL as serving grid reliability over its entire territory, what’s uncertain are its benefits for Maryland ratepayers, Hobbs said.
“At the moment, it’s at least not clear to me that this is the cheapest way to resolve reliability problems,” Hobbs told Technical.ly, “or that it would provide net positive benefits to Maryland ratepayers.”
It’s not yet determined how much Maryland ratepayers will shoulder for the project, but Hobbs said they will likely bear at least a portion of the cost since the line passes through the state and includes local reinforcements. When first approved, the project was estimated at $441 million, but a recent update from NextEra Energy now puts MARL’s cost at $960 million.
Another concern stems from environmental impacts and how that could affect tourism.
The Maryland General Assembly reclassified protected wildlife areas of Garrett County in 2025 to allow the transmission line to be built.
Garrett County relies heavily on the industry for its economic development, which Stutzman attributes in large part to its undeveloped landscape.
“By disrupting the natural habitats that you see with these rolling hills and forests,” Stutzman said, “it starts to not look like the Garrett County people have come to love.”
