At a glance
- The three-year project, FC-DC: Fuel Cell Solutions for Brownfield and Greenfield Data Centers, is led by the DOE's National Laboratory of the Rockies.
- NLR will develop reference designs for brownfield retrofits and greenfield sites, including 800VDC power distribution, and run real-time simulation, hardware-in-the-loop and transient testing.
- A validated 800VDC retrofit reference design is what sponsors and lenders could apply to existing data halls.
Renewable Innovations joined a US Department of Energy-backed project to develop fuel cell power systems for AI data centers, Data Center Dynamics reported Nov. 5.
The three-year project, FC-DC: Fuel Cell Solutions for Brownfield and Greenfield Data Centers, is led by the DOE's National Laboratory of the Rockies. Renewable Innovations will design, build and validate a fuel cell rack system intended to power and cool a high-power compute rack on the data center floor.
NLR will develop reference designs for brownfield retrofits and greenfield sites, including 800VDC power distribution, and run real-time simulation, hardware-in-the-loop and transient testing.
A validated 800VDC retrofit reference design is what sponsors and lenders could apply to existing data halls.
Project partners include Nvidia, Energy Vault, DRG Technical Solutions, HPE Labs and Alderbuck Energy.
A field demonstration at Sky Data Centers' Santa Rosa, California, site will test fuel cell integration with 800VDC architectures. Funding, the rack's power rating and the demonstration date were not disclosed.
Eaton's chief executive, Paulo Ruiz, said the 800-volt DC shift is real on customer power savings, though the build-out timing is not Eaton's to set, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported.
“By moving power generation directly to the compute load, we eliminate the complex distribution paths and energy loss typical of traditional power systems, making the entire power process significantly more efficient and responsive,” said Steve Hammond, senior research advisor at NLR.
Renewable Innovations said the project builds on a 70kW fuel cell integrated with cloud computing racks at NLR's Energy Systems Integration Facility with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
By moving power generation directly to the compute load, we eliminate the complex distribution paths and energy loss typical of traditional power systemsSteve Hammond, senior research advisor at the National Laboratory of the Rockies
Reported by the Energy Transition desk from Data Center Dynamics and Private Wealth Daily archive. Published . Corrections