It appears Apple is not building one but two data centers on its Maiden site, with plans for a smaller facility filed with the Catawba County, in North Carolina, where Apple holds a 171-acre parcel of land.

Apple has already been working on a 500,000 sq ft data center for its i-Cloud services at the site, and recently announced it was going to build the largest end-user solar array in the US at the site to help feed its power demand.

It is a move that recently came under criticism from Greenpeace, which said its plans for providing renewable energy were not in line with the amount of power such a large facility would require.

Apple said the data center in North Carolina would be coal-free by the end of 2013.

But now, the Hickory Daily Record, a local Catawba daily news site, said new plans show Apple has more than just the one data center planned for the site.

It said plans filed with the council show Apple wants to build a separate 21,030 sq ft data center at a cost of about US$1.88m that will T-bone the larger facility.

Apple refers to this as a “tactical” data center, which will have 11 rooms. Mechanical permits have been lodged for 22 air conditioners, five fans, 14 humidifiers, among other things, including an eight-foot high security fence.

Whether this facility will get bigger, is still non known, as the structure is referred to as “1^st phase”.