Meeting a Data Centre's Energy Demand with a Fuel Cell

Theme: Climate Change and Energy Track: 3b - Mitigating Climate Change Between 2000 and 2005, 80% of the growth in the world’s electricity use can be attributed to the IT sector. Cooling systems are one of the largest... [ view full abstract ]

Theme: Climate Change and Energy
Track: 3b - Mitigating Climate Change

Between 2000 and 2005, 80% of the growth in the world’s electricity use can be attributed to the IT sector. Cooling systems are one of the largest components in data centres’ use of electricity, corresponding to 25- 50% of all electricity use. There are a limited number of studies that investigate fuel cells (FC) for meeting energy demand of a data centre. These mainly focus on electricity aspect but not on cooling.
This paper aims to attract the attention of the IT sector to the merits of FCs by evaluating economic feasibility of powering and cooling a data centre with a FC based multi-generation system. This is done by the calculating the Equivalent Annual Cash Flow (EACF).
The results show that although with the current energy prices and operating and maintenance (O&M) costs the system saves over $1’000’000 in electricity bill over the lifetime, which is 20 years, considering the capital and O&M costs the system has an equivalent annual loss of approximately $650’000. This means; with current energy prices and state of technology such investments are not feasible. However assuming there will be no change on natural gas price and an annual 3% rise in electricity price, 2% rise in cooling and heating prices as well as in O&M costs, the system may become economically feasible giving an EACF of approximately $260’000.
In conclusion FC based combined cooling heating and power (FC-CCHP) is highly unfeasible due to its high capital cost, low lifetime of stacks, and high O&M costs. However, when the expected changes in energy prices, savings due to recovered heat and possible governmental subsidies and sustainability incentives are considered, FC-CCHP would be a feasible investment. If the IT sector plans to fast track decarbonisation of their power use, FC-CCHP is an important technology to pay attention to.

Keyword: Fuel Cell, CCHP, Data Centre, Thermally Driven Cooling