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 Infrastructure event, this year in an online edition, Roel van de Pas from Nedstack will provide more insight into possible hydrogen applications for data centers.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

Nedstack was founded in 1999 as a spin-off from AkzoNobel, says Van de Pas: “They were already interested in fuel cells in the eighties because AkzoNobel produces a lot of hydrogen as a by-product in their chlorine production. But the composites, polymers and catalysts also fitted in very well with the Akzo Chemical division. In the late eighties, they started developing Dutch fuel cell technology, together with ECN, which was still an autonomous research institute at the time. This part later continued autonomously as Nedstack.”

He continues: "Nedstack now makes its own fuel cell systems based on industrial components. These are heavier, more efficient and have a longer lifespan. Until recently, the market was limited to where hydrogen was already present."

The energy transition and the desire for lower CO2 emissions have changed this picture and created new opportunities for companies such as Nedstack, says Van de Pas: “The energy landscape is changing enormously due to renewables. There are also surplus renewables, which create an excess of energy at certain times of the day. As a result, hydrogen will soon be available in many more places. This makes it attractive to use hydrogen as an energy buffer. And that makes the application of fuel cell systems attractive in other markets.”

Trade in electricity with hydrogen

Van de Pas has a concrete example: “In Australia, we are working on realizing a power plant that does nothing other than generate hydrogen at times when electricity costs almost nothing and supply electricity back at times when the electricity price is high. That is possible because in Australia the differences between low and high electricity prices are very large.”

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.”

Hydrogen and the data center market

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.”

However, there are still a number of technical challenges for the future to apply hydrogen in data centres, for example for the long-term storage of hydrogen. Van de Pas: “Storing hydrogen under pressure for a very long time for the few hours per year that a backup system has to run is almost impossible. It is not economical and brings with it safety issues. One of the solutions for this is the use of different hydrogen carriers.”

Roel van de Pas and Max Aerts from DENS will tell more about the possibilities and application of different hydrogen carriers during the webinar on November 12. Would you like to attend this webinar free of charge? Register for the online IT Infra Event.