The data center industry is getting comfortable with Bloom Energy fuel cells. You can now find the silvery “Bloom boxes” at data centers operated by eBay, Equinix, Apple, CenturyLink, AT&T, Verizon and NTT America, supporting more than 150 megawatts worth of mission-critical IT operations.
That’s a meaningful footprint for a technology that made its debut just five years ago. But for Bloom, it represents a beachhead on a larger mission to transform how data centers are powered and equipped. The company is positioning its fuel cells as a tool to overhaul the traditional power architecture of mission-critical facilities, eliminating the need for expensive UPS systems and emergency backup generators.
“I honestly feel this is going to be the most disruptive technology to hit this industry in 20 years,” said Peter Gross, Vice President of Mission Critical Systems for Bloom Energy. “It’s the next big thing.”
Thus far only a couple of projects have embraced Bloom’s full vision, using Bloom boxes as their primary power source and the utility grid for backup power. Most customers have incorporated the fuel cells into their existing power architecture, putting a toe in the water rather than diving into the deep end of the pool.
Rethinking the Data Center Power Chain
To realize its ambitions, Bloom must overcome the challenging economics of deploying fuel cells at data center scale, as well as the glacial pace of adoption of many new technologies in enterprise data centers. It’s a shift that requires a fundamental rethinking of the way data centers are powered, placing fuel cells in a prominent position in the power chain. And that will take some time.
Gross is the point man on this effort. He has no illusions about the challenge before him, but he comes to the task with a resume that commands attention. Gross has been a pioneer in advanced data center design for decades, first at EYP Mission Critical Design and later at HP. He believes the growing focus on data center sustainability creates a huge opportunity for Bloom Energy.
“It’s clear to me that enterprises are truly interested in reducing their carbon footprint,” said Gross. “For mission-critical apps, there is no other solution. Solar and wind are not yet truly mission-critical. CHP (combined heat and power) has never caught on in the data center. It’s not yet a component of data center infrastructure. Bloom has been the only game in town for high-reliability, carbon-neutral facilities.”
Bloom isn’t the only player seeking to build traction for fuel cells in data centers. Other approaches seek to harness a range of renewable fuel sources, or position fuel cells at the rack level to power servers. But Bloom has emerged as the market leader in mission-critical fuel cells, and looms as the best hope for establishing them as a standard component of data center infrastructure.
The Case for ‘Better Electrons’
The Bloom Energy Server uses solid oxide fuel cell technology that converts fuel to electricity through an electro-chemical reaction, without any combustion. It can work with either natural gas or biofuels, such as biogas from landfills. After years of development, the company came out of stealth in 2010 with a list of marquee corporate customers, including Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Walmart, eBay and Google.
A Bloom Energy Server fuel cell deployed at CalTech. (Image: Bloom Energy)
Bloom says that its on-site fuel cells offer “better electrons” by making more efficient use of fuel than coal-fired power plants, eliminating power loss during distribution, and sharply reducing emissions. The Bloom boxes offer a better carbon profile than most utility power, and can be used with renewable energy to create a carbon-neutral solution.
One of the primary barriers to adoption in data centers has been the cost of the fuel cells, and the scale required to support facilities using many megawatts of electricity.
“Fuel cells have been around forever, but nobody’s been able to achieve a fuel cell system that’s cost-effective,” said Gross.
Bloom Energy Servers offer up to 200kW of capacity. Early Bloom installations took advantage of incentives that reduced the cost of power, which without incentives would operate at between 8 and 13 cents per kilowatt hour, according to various estimates. Bloom says Bloom Energy Server users typically see a 3 to 5 year payback on their investment.
But that varies by geography. Bloom has done best in regions where the cost of electricity is high and the price of natural gas is low.
“In California and the Northeast states the economics work really well,” said Gross, noting that those two regions are major data center markets. “This solution will not be applicable in central Washington state, where the cost of power is low. But gas is cheap everywhere and will be for a long time.”
Why Change is Difficult
So how do you make the economics more compelling? By using Bloom boxes to eliminate other expensive equipment in the data center power chain. When you add Bloom Energy Servers but subtract the expense of UPS units and generators, the cost equation looks very different.
Gross jokes that “everybody wants innovation, as long as it’s been in place for 20 years.”
“In the data center industry, innovation comes at a slow pace, especially on the electrical side,” he said. “It’s moved a little faster on cooling, where the big Internet companies have been innovating. On the electrical side, the basic architecture has been effectively the same for 20 years. Nothing fundamental has changed.
“Historically, there is no real incentive for innovation in this industry because the stakes are so high,” Gross added. “For adoption to improve, a senior person in the company has to push for this. These systems are not inexpensive, and having an executive sponsor is helpful.”
eBay Goes All In
An executive sponsor like Dean Nelson, perhaps. As Vice President for Global Foundation Services at eBay, Nelson runs the data center network for the e-commerce giant. He has made innovation a priority, working with eBay’s vendors to develop cutting-edge solutions that can make its data centers more energy efficient and cost-effective.
In 2012, eBay went all-in with the Bloom solution, installing 30 Bloom boxes to support a new phase of eBay’s “Project Quicksilver” data center in South Jordan, Utah.
In a traditional configuration, data centers use the utility grid for primary power, with UPS units and backup generators providing emergency power in the event of grid outages. At eBay, the Bloom Energy Servers provide primary power, with the utility grid serving as backup. High-density modular data centers are packed with dual-corded servers, with one input from the Bloom systems and the other from the grid.
In this video, Nelson and Gross discuss the Utah project and how eBay is using Bloom to achieve “cleaner commerce.”
The eBay data center has been online for nearly two years. In April, the Bloom boxes performed flawlessly in keeping the eBay facility online throughout a utility outage. In seeking to convince others to adopt a similar approach, the success of eBay is an important validation.
“There are systems that have been running for two and a half years with good results,” said Gross. “Companies were skeptical, then looked at early adopters like eBay and understood the system performance, and became much more open to the idea. Now the number of companies inquiring is impressive.”
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