How fuel cells make data centers cleaner and more reliable

Hydrogen offers new opportunities for green data centers.

In the future, Dutch industry will have to run largely on hydrogen. The government also has plans to use hydrogen as an energy carrier for the storage of sustainably generated electricity. Nedstack, a manufacturer of industrial fuel cells, also sees opportunities for the energy-intensive data center market. During the IT Infra event, this year in an online edition, Roel van de Pas of Nedstack will provide more insight into possible hydrogen applications for data centers.

Data centers are also closely involved in the evolution of our energy system towards sustainable solutions. Van de Pas: “Data centers are part of the change on the demand side. This creates new combinations of supply and demand for energy. And there are already possibilities for combining hydrogen with data centers. Think of back-up power. You can also supply that with zero emissions using fuel cells.”

Nedstack does not currently supply fuel cells to the data center market. According to Van de Pas, many data centers themselves still have to make the transition to such green concepts. “The implementation will run parallel to the implementation of hydrogen with our energy system,” he says. “Data centers can ultimately become self-sufficient and energy-positive. If you see how much surface area data centers cover and how much renewables they can generate, and at that moment cannot use, then there is a lot of potential in both supplying heat and electricity from data centers.”

The reading of Roel van de Pas by Nedstack takes place on Thursday, November 12 at 2:30 PM, Immediately following this, the lecture by Max Aerts, DENS will take place.