(November 10, 2017) STUTTGART, Germany — Fuel cell technology is an integral part of Daimler’s powertrain strategy. The company has already gathered experience with hydrogen-powered electric vehicles over several vehicle generations and millions of test kilometers around the world and recently presented the next step with pre-production models of the Mercedes-Benz GLC F‑CELL.

Convinced of the potential of fuel cell technology and hydrogen as an energy storage medium in the context of the overall energy system, the company is following a holistic approach and extends its development activities into non-transportation industries.

Joining forces with industry leaders Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Power Innovations (PI), a LiteOn company, Daimler AG with its subsidiary company NuCellSys GmbH and supported by MBRDNA and Daimler Innovations Lab1886, will develop prototype systems starting this year for back-up and continuous power solutions for data centers and other stationary applications using automotive hydrogen fuel cell systems.

“The maturity of automotive fuel cell systems is unquestioned today. They are ready for everyday use and constitute a viable option for the transportation sector. However, the opportunities for hydrogen beyond the mobility sector — energy, industrial and residential sectors — are versatile and require the development of new strategies. Economies of scale and therefore modularization are important challenges”, says Prof. Dr. Christian Mohrdieck, fuel cell director at Daimler AG and CEO of Daimler’s subsidiary NuCellSys.

Data centers are some of the largest consumers of power in the new economy, and the growth rate of this power consumption is significant as well. U.S. data centers are projected to consume an estimated 140 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year by 2020, equivalent to the annual output of about 50 power plants, emitting nearly 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution per year, according to a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The increasing power requirements must be balanced with the provisioning of sustainable energy supplies that meet and exceed environmental standards.

Diamler says fuel cells are a very promising technology in this field. No other power technology can offer the high reliability, unlimited scalability, and renewable energy benefits without costly utility dependency like the fuel cell can. With a constant supply of hydrogen, the fuel cell will keep supplying power.

The technology relies on an electrochemical reaction like a battery, but, unlike a battery, fuel cells have a limitless capability. The high reliability, low emission rates, low noise levels and dramatically reduced footprint make fuel cells the ideal choice for micro-grids within data centers. Those technical benefits combined with the unlimited scalability, lowered maintenance, and cost efficiency can solve the massive energy storage requirements for today's data centers.

“Rapidly escalating power demands are putting pressure on traditional power delivery solutions. The use of Daimler fuel cells for continuous and back-up power solutions will allow us to explore new, sustainable, cost-effective and rapid methods to power our customers’ data centers”, said Bill Mannel, VP & GM HPC and AI, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

HPE is working with the collaboration partners to integrate fuel cell power systems with its current IT infrastructure solutions, including the HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10, HPE SGI 8600, and other HPE platforms.

In order to enable a 24/7 data center power supply when using renewable energy, Daimler, HPE and PI re-think power generation and incorporate hydrogen storage and fuel cell systems to supply power directly to the racks of computer servers housed in data centers. The novel concept of a “hydrogen-based” carbon-free data center utilizes hydrogen fuel cells, electroayzers, storage, solar (photovoltaic) cells and wind turbines.

The partners thereby mitigate the intermittency and variability of renewable sources. The idea is to have the basic power supply of the data center covered by solar power stations and wind turbines.

Under conditions where solar and wind electrical generation exceeds total electricity demand of the data center, rather than curtailing generation, the excess power can be used to generate and store hydrogen. In situations where data center electrical demand exceeds solar and wind generation, or even during power outages, the hydrogen fuel cells can provide sustainable power from the stored hydrogen.

What is most attractive about this automotive fuel cell application is that it helps simplify data center power generation and distribution with a significantly reduced carbon footprint. Traditional power distribution can constitute 30-40% of total construction costs for a new data center. This new power provisioning approach significantly lowers the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the data center by negating the need for diesel generators, central uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), switchgear, and expensive copper power lines.