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Fuel Cell-Powered Data Centers Could Cut Costs and Carbon
angry tapir writes "A group of Microsoft researchers believe that using fuel cells to power data centers could potentially result in an 'over 20% reduction in costs using conservative projections', cutting infrastructure and power input costs. In addition, using fuel cells would likely result in a smaller carbon footprint for data centers. The researchers looked at the potential of using fuel cells at the rack level to power servers in data centers — although they note there is a long way to go before this could become a reality (not least of the small worldwide production level of fuel cells)."
That's what that dash is doing to that headline.
A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used. Fuel cells are different from batteries in that they require a constant source of fuel and oxygen/air to sustain the chemical reaction; however, fuel cells can produce electricity continually for as long as these inputs are supplied.
So it's better to have the fuel cell at your place, rather than the fuel cells be at some electric company that then sells you the electricity at a higher price than you would pay for the "inputs".
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Give me a call when those fuel cells are ready for deployment, then we can talk about all these wonderful uses. No talk about the carbon footprint of operating fuel cells?
The article mixes the use of fuel cells as a power source with efficiency improvements. The only place that makes sense is with the minor savings that may be seen by eliminating DC converters, but you will still need DC regulators which will have some losses.
A major oversight of this article is the fact that fuel cells are major heat generators, not something you want in a data center. They would need to be installed in a separated structure, therefore idea that "Rack-level fuel cells would do away with data-centre-wide electricity distribution for servers" is hard to imagine.
Fuel Cell-Powered Data Centers Could Cut Costs and Carbon,
belch candy and caviar,
increase ROI, MTTF, MTBF, LMNOP,
and even brew a cuppa tea!
but just listen to Microsoft, dont take it from me!
P.S.: dear god someone please use Azure. I know its not the datacenter its the cloud, but we've pissed cash into it like a shit-faced geriatric at a slot machine and so far it generates more heat than revenue...
P.P.S: also try Bing, Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, and windows 8.1 app store moneytrain edition for workgroups. god christ i cant take another quarterly 'why arent we relevant anymore' meeting.
--Gil in sales.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Considering that a major power plant typically outputs electrically about 1/3rd of its thermal power, can we invent a technology to connect a turbine to the rack cooling system? Given that processors won't directly generate steam, you may lose another 1/2 in that conversion, but that's still over 16% of the data center that could power itself...
That's a lot less exotic than fuel cells.
I guess someone with enough billions has already done that math and the return wasn't there...
but what benefit is reducing carbon output?
...the energy cost of separating the hydrogen from the oxygen? That is currently the Achilles heel of fuel cells. It takes more energy to do that than to burn fossil fuels or nuclear directly. Though every once in a while someone comes up with a lab-proof for doing it more efficiently. Anyone have the latest on that technology?
Ten years before I got ready to build I went to an Open House at a new development north of here precisely to see the house that had the fuel cell generator. At that time it was about the size of two or three large freezers and ran on natural gas.
The tech and I talked a lot. He figured that within ten years the same product would be about the size of a cabinet freezer and perhaps $10K in cost. It would easily run on propane (which is what I knew I'd have in the mountains).
Flash forward ten years, I'm getting ready to build and search online for fuel cell companies--and find virtually no changes since that initial visit. Nobody was selling a house-capable fuel cell generator, they were more custom built than mass produced, and finding a good way to handle the recharge filters wasn't really standardized yet.
Needless to say I was quite disappointed. Ended up going with solar which I do like, but not making power 24x7 is quite annoying.
Maybe someday.....either this or Mr. Fusion!
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
I actually like the idea as a concept. Fuel Cells have been used in small applications and there was talk from the Doe PNNL about a new system just last year. I think if a large scale consumer of power, Microsoft, were to start pushing the tech you'd start to see more commercial viability of these kinds of projects. I'd also advocate going the geothermal or solar route as well to look at powering data centers but ultimately I think power efficiency will render more savings. This year we've seen AMD roll out the first ARM based server, which although not as powerful as say a Xeon class server, does offer significant power savings in terms of compute-per-watt. With the usual technology refresh cycles that occur in all data centers we may see power reduction occurring gradually. Obviously other Server manufacturers are pushing on compute-per-watt as well with other architectures but we also have more and more servers going into production so you still have to solve the power generation side of the equation as well.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
i could see a system where a data center uses, and stores for later use, lower-cost off-peak electricity, then uses that stored power during peak rate periods. if a typical server consumes 500 watts, 24/7, and the rate difference is $0.06 per kwh, that's $263 per year saved, per server (on 4380 kwh per server, per year), not including the lower taxes paid on the now-lower utility bills... and it provides a source of power for building UPS for before (and while) generators for longer-term power outages are started up, replacing the lead-acid and other types of batteries currently being used for that purpose. however, we're a number of years away from low enough costs, and high enough production, to make fuel cells viable for pretty much any commercial use on even a modest scale.
Find all articles related to renewable energy in the last 10 years. Too many hits to count. Find all articles related to massive improvement in battery technology in the last 10 years. Too many hits to count. The broken record continues to turn.
Bah
The article does not mention it clearly, but those fuel cells are likely natural-gas powered. They are either very high-temperature cells (800 degrees C) or low-temperature cells (70-120 degrees C) with a reformer somewhere that converts natural gas to hydrogen. In the former case you would need to handle fuel at insanely high temperatures close to a bunch of electronics (you can guess what happens at the first leak), in the second you have to handle a hydrogen distribution network, and hydrogen is a nasty gas to work with (see for example hydrogen embrittlement); nothing that cannot be handled, but providing it to single servers or even racks? Hydrogen-proof piping is expensive, and even worse are the valves.
In any case, gas piping is never going to be as practical as power cords. You cannot bend it, coil it, join it easily, and you will need also piping to collect exhaust gases: since this hydrogen comes from natural gas, it travels with CO2, and you don't want it to accumulate in the data centre. You may also need another line to provide oxygen if the data centre ventilation is insufficient.
The argument that one would do away with power supplies is foolish: simply provide a network of DC power instead for all required voltages. FCs produce DC power, but their output voltage is unsteady and needs to be converted to the right voltage; and there are several voltages that a server requires anyway.
So, if FCs have to be, they need to be placed outside the data centre, and function as their power stations. At this point, one wonders, why should we ever consider to install FCs in power stations? Simply build a FC power station and export to the grid.
The main driver for FCs in power generation in the US is the low price of natural gas due to high shale gas production.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Assuming they're going to put fuel cells into racks and power DC power supplies directly, there's all sorts of little complications to work out.
Like -- what do you do with all that extra waste heat, and what impact would that have on overall costs, versus simply having the electricity fed in conventionally?
And what about the safety -- or lack thereof -- of running gas lines to every rack in a large facility?
Fuel cells don't exactly grow on trees either. The savings would have to be massive to justify the significant costs of the cells themselves.
What a great idea. Fuel cells produce no nasty carbon emissions. So as long as you ignore how the hydrogen that feeds them is produced in the first place (generally from an extremely dirty and wasteful natural gas extraction process) and the pollution involved in actually making extremely expensive fuel cells in the first place, this makes perfect sense.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Give me a call when those fuel cells are ready for deployment...
Ok, what number should we call to wake you since industrial fuel cells are already available and apparently work fairly well.
Any sensible infrastructure would either run directly off methane, or would produce hydrogen gas from methane. No one in their right mind is considering using electrolysis to generate hydrogen.
Electricity is too easy to control compared to other energy sources in spite of a few significant examples to the contrary.
Have gnu, will travel.
If only Apple had thought about this before...Oh wait, they already have Data Centers that are at least partially powered by Fuel Cells. Strange there is no mention of this anywhere yet.
They're not talking about hydrogen. They're talking about methane (i.e. natural gas) fuel cells, hence the mention of the "gas grid".
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
In the short term, the Microsoft report is about natural-gas fuelled fuel cells.
New analyses are showing natural gas to be about equal to coal in CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions per amount of energy output.
The reasons are basically two-fold. One, there is a lot of gas escape and energy usage during the extraction and transport of natural gas, and two, natural gas is methane, which when it escapes into the atmosphere is 20-30 times worse in greenhouse warming effect than CO2 over a 100 year lifecycle in the atmosphere.
Now if microsoft was talking about putting in really large fields of PV or solar thermal electricity generators around each data center, and generating the hydrogen from water, then that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but then in that case, is hydrogen the best energy storage medium for a solar data center? Maybe molten salt (heat storage) or compressed air or underground pumped hydro or sodium-sulfur batteries would be better than compressed or liquid hydrogen.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If conservative projections yield a 20% reduction in costs, then liberal projections would yield a 100% reduction in costs because the Federal Government would be paying for it with money taken from evil rich people.
Vs. "Let's eat Grandma!" kind of thing...?
Fuel cells need ultra pure fuel in order to not spoil their extremely expensive reactors. Creating this fuel and transporting it cleanly is not cheap.
I've seen no end of articles claiming that fuel cells are the cure to everything. Tons of grant money has flowed and no products are displacing other technology.
The market place is far from perfect, but it is far better than any panel of pointy headed academics at providing workable solutions. M$ has shown the lack of ability to create new profitable products for many years now - this looks like yet another windoze fone effort.
I wonder what Elon Musk would have to say about putting explosive fuel cells in the heart of our data centers.
Fuel cells, as discussed in the article, are not at all a method of energy storage. They are a method of power generation.
You got it exactly backwards.
Only some kinds of fuel cells can be run backwards (such as platinum catalyst hydrogen fuel cells) to do things like split water into hydrogen and oxygen using an external source of electricity (solar cell, power line, etc) - which can then later be recombined into water to generate electricity.
Well, that little red button at the doors is suddenly going to get a lot more important. Not too keen on having automatic shut-off valves on the fuel supply to the fuel cells, especially if it is natural gas (or hydrogen gas) connected to the Emergency Power Off.
Also curious how you deal with the CO2 exhausted from the reformers in the room. That impacts a lot of the traditional assumptions for outside air ventilation rates.
Microsoft imagined tablets back in the 90s. Nobody cared
That's because Microsoft's implementation of those tablets back then SUCKED. I used some of their tablets and they simply weren't a good product. They treated a pen like a mouse and slapped some half-baked afterthought software for using pens on top of their mouse/keyboard oriented products. The result was extra cost for very little benefit to most people. They never really understood that a pen is NOT a replacement for a keyboard. A pen is ONLY useful for drawing. As a result Microsoft's tablets were an answer to a question nobody asked.
Apple imagined them a couple years ago and people wet themselves like an excited dog.
That's because Apple's product actually worked fairly well and filled a need many people didn't even know they had. My 94 year old computer illiterate grandmother uses an iPad daily and there is no way in hell that would have happened with Microsoft's tablet.
They could use a contained ammonia system to both cool and power the place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator/ The refrigerator in my RV can use 3 different heat sources to cool the contents (AC,DC and propane)
Combine it with a multistage turbine generator with a separate natural gas powered stage and you have a working regenerative power system.
For that matter, you don't even _really_ need to use the ammonia, you could just pipe the natural gas directly across the cooling surfaces after it expands (and thus cools) from the gas line... but they aren't already designed for such things, and what works with what you have in place is often more economical.
I believe that cows presently a considerable source of methane. They eat vegetation. That means they recycle carbon. Biodigestors can also supply a lot of methane. Feeding the methane to fuel cells that produce will reduce some of that threat. Using the biodigestion remains for ferilizing or as base for biodiesel, and otrher sturr. There are surely others.
micro, modular nuclear reactors and nuclear batteries are the way forward.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_nuclear_reactor
new research area:
electricity is created by encouraging 'free electrons' to flow through a conductor. nuclear fission generates 'free neutrons and proton'. can we find a way to channel and conduct these free neutrons and photons in much the same way we channel and conduct the free electrons of electricity? neutricity, if you will.
Should have bought something on some land. Then you could build a 1Mw solar furnace yourself.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you have a fuel cell that burns methane (i.e. Natural gas) or other fuels the fuel cell will have to reform it into Hydrogen (releasing CO2) before it's used.
And if you're ultimately running from fossil fuels, methane is the least carbon-emitting choice.
Burning the hydrogen atoms to water produces MOST of the power from fossil fuels. Burning the carbon to CO2 produces a little more. But in gas and oil it's mostly there to make the hydrogen easier to handle than H2.
Methane has four hydrogens per carbon (4:1), the best ratio of all hydrocarbons. Ethane: (6: 2 = 3:1), propane: 8:3 = 2.666..."1, and so on. As you transition from gasses to oil you're approaching the large saturated hydrocarbon molecule limit of 2:1.
Then there's coal, where you're JUST burning the carbon. All CO2, much less energy (though still plenty if you burn ENOUGH of it).
Tell me when they come up with a range of affordable, small, light weight, fuel cells that efficiently make a couple hundred to a couple thousand watts by burning odorized propane with ambient air. I want one for my car, one for my travel trailer, and one for each house.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Right now, if I don't have electric and gas, my water heater and furnace become inoperable.
In my remote house my heat and water heater both work fine on only propane. As long as the tank is not empty we're fine (and the tank only needs filling about three times a year).
The water heater is gas with a pilot light and no electric controls (except for the pilot light safety thermocouple, which generates enough power from the flame's heat to control the safety shutdown).
While the regular furnace has electronic controls and blower, I also have a backup: A propane "fireplace" stove in the great room, with a room layout that lets it heat the living area and keep the pipes from freezing.
Again it works with a pilot light, and the thermocouple's few millivolts also provide enough power, controlled by a mechanical-switch thermostat in the middle of the house, to operate the main gas valve as well. Though the stove's room blower will also fail in an outage, convection is more than adequate to circulate the heat in the big-open-space-in-the-middle house design. Kept things nice and comfy when we had a day-long outage in deep winter.
When away the stats are set to 55 for the furnace, 50 for the backup stove. This worked just fine one winter, when the furnace's draft sensor failed and the furnace was dead for weeks until we got there and discovered the issue. That definitely paid for the stove in one event.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Now a days global warming is the burning issue across the whole world.
What cuts cost is cutting out the power company middle man. It does not matter if it is a nuclear reactor datacenter, fuel cell data center, or coal burning datacenter. If fuel cells were so great power companies could be making power with them and selling the power at a profit.
This is basically just taking several 'news for nerds' and smashing them together in a stupid way.
As long as the tank is not empty we're fine (and the tank only needs filling about three times a year).
That's a small LP tank or you're using a lot. I lived in a house with an LP tank that lasted about 1.5 years, so my dad could safely wait for prices to drop in the summer, and that was used for hot water and to heat a 2,500 sqrft house with A LOT of large windows. And we have cold winters up here.