No more electrical infrastructure: towards fuel cell powered data centers

Abstract

We consider the use of fuel cells for powering data centers, based on benefits in reliability, capital and operational costs, and reduced environmental emissions. Using fuel cells effectively in data centers introduces several challenges and we highlight key research questions for designing a fuel cell based data center power distribution system. We analyze a specific configuration in the design space to quantify the cost benefits for a large scale data center, for the most mature and commonly deployed fuel cell technology, achieving over 20% reduction in costs using conservative projections.