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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)."
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".
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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,
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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.
...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?
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.
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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.
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?
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.
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.