WASHINGTON — Data center operator RagingWire Data Centers Inc. has opened a 245,000-square-foot data center with 16 megawatts of power at its new, highly-secured Loudoun County, Virginia data center campus.

The center, called VA3 Data Center, is located at the intersection of Waxpool Road and Farmwell Road, in Ashburn.

It is RagingWire’s third center in Ashburn and the first building on its new Ashburn Data Center campus, a 78-acre parcel that will eventually contain a total of seven data centers with 108 megawatts of power and more than 1 million square feet highly-secured space.

The company, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based communications giant NTT Group, has already started construction on its VA4 Data Center, which is expected to be completed in 2019.

The data center’s security measures include iris scanners, intelligent high-definition cameras that can detect suspicious behavior, an anti-climb perimeter fence and a security gate that RagingWire says can stop a 15,000-pound truck traveling at 30 mph.

Data center demand in Northern Virginia has soared in the last decade, driven by tax incentives, geographic location and by cheap electric rates. Northern Virginia leads the North American data center market with more than 30 percent market share, according to JLL, a company that provides real estate services for corporations and investors.

Late last year. Santa Clara, California-based Vantage Data Centers acquired 42 acres in Ashburn with plans to invest $1 billion in its data center campus.

Loudoun County alone has more than 75 data centers and 10 million square feet of data center space either operational or under development, according to the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development.

Prince William County is also a major data center hub, surpassing 3.5 million square feet of data center space last year.