Industrial giant promises to solve EU datacentre power crisis with fuel cells
Solid oxide cells promise to take pressure off of grids
An Irish green project development company, Lumcloon Energy, has become the spearhead for a Korean industrial conglomerate's plan to fix Europe's datacentre energy crisis with fuel cells.
The pair have proposed using solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), an emerging technology billed as an industrial alternative to big batteries. It promises to take pressure off electricity grids in major EU cities like Dublin, where growing numbers of datacentres have combined with under-investment by utilities in electricity grids to create an environmental controversy and bans on development of big computing facilities, just as a digitalising world needs them more than ever.
SK Ecoplant, an arm of Korean industrial giant SK, now plans to build a datacentre using SOFCs supplied by US manufacturer Bloom Energy as its entry into the EU energy market, it said in a statement.
The firms gave no details about the project, but SK said Ireland was relying on it to solve the electricity grid shortages that, after years of under-investment, exploded into a political crisis last year. National operator EirGrid imposed a ban on new power connections for datacentres, despite the data industry being a bedrock of Ireland's economy.
Datacentre operators in major cities all over the world are being forced by similar crises and a host of other pressures to seek ways to generate their own power on-site, instead of getting it from the electricity grid, said Steve Hone, director of The Data Centre Alliance, an industry association.
The pressure is forcing computer firms to put right a topsy-turvy situation, where they had become dependent on cheap, abundant fossil-driven grid power.
The datacentre business had originally set out to get power independent of the grid, said Hone, to help guarantee that data services never fail. Such uptime is the tenet of an industry supplying data to other critical services.
"Datacentres are supposed to autonomous, theoretically," said Hone. "You're not to rely on any third-party utility sources [of energy].
"It's everything to do with uptime. Primary energy should be on campus. The backup source should be the grid. It's always been about that.
"If you put yourself somewhere like Africa, where the national grid doesn't exist, that makes perfect sense. If you want to keep the lights on, you have to be in control of your own destiny and generate your own power.
"The problem is we've got very used to a very stable and very cheap utility. What should have been the secondary power source has become primary. Everyone relies on the grid," he said.
Self-powered datacentres
Multiple pressures are now forcing datacentres to seek their own power sources, including rising energy prices and under-developed power grids in cities where the green transition is causing rising demand from all sectors of society.
Fuel cells are among the independent sources of green power now being tested. German industrial giant Bosch has begun manufacturing them after putting a 20% stake in UK SOFC pioneer Ceres, and is piloting their use in a datacentre in Germany.
SK Ecoplant, known as the construction firm behind the £2 billion Silvertown road tunnel being built under London's River Thames, is a major developer of wind farms, industrial battery power and hydrochemicals.
SOFCs are expected to be filled with green hydrogen, making them zero carbon, in addition to being extraordinarily efficient. But while green hydrogen supplies are developed, the fuel cells will use natural gas, allegedly more efficiently and cleanly than other power generators.
The deal coincides with Ireland's big investment in offshore wind, expected to be a primary source of green hydrogen, and might meanwhile rely on its own position as a major supplier of natural gas. Echelon Data Centres, an Irish firm, has also been developing plans for gas-powered datacentres.
SK employed Lumcloon Energy to lead its Dublin venture. Lumcloon was not prepared to comment.