Developing a sustainable alternative power source for urban digital infrastructure
The vision of E2P2 is to develop and demonstrate low environmental impact fuel cells that provide economic and resilient prime power solutions for data centres in populated areas. The project envisions revolutionising the power distribution to urban and edge of the network data centres by bringing European fuel cell technologies to market within an open standard that will enable their simultaneous deployment within a modular and extensible ecosystem, whilst being compatible with readily available data centre products and services.
The EcoEdge PrimePower (E2P2) proof-of-concept initiative aims to develop the authoritative open standard for fuel cell applications, paving the way towards the commercialization of fuel cell energy for data centres and other energy-intensive industries. A consortium of seven companies—Equinix, InfraPrime,
Hydrogen fuel cells are recognized as a clean power solution that can help achieve the European Commission’s goal for climate-neutral data centers by 2030. In practice, however, their application is still very limited. The EcoEdge PrimePower (E2P2) proof-of-concept initiative aims
In the quest for net-zero power generation, data center providers routinely deliberate on the best way to contribute to the ‘cleaning up’ grid-scale power and ‘green’ backup power and generation too. In 2021, the European Clean Hydrogen Partnership announced the
The E2P2 project aims to address the problems associated with powering urban data centers by creating a proof of concept (POC) alternative prime power source that employs fuel cell technologies for on-site power generation, which are efficient, quiet, showing reduced environmental impact and negligible demand on the electrical grid.
Fuel cells have been around since the Apollo space program and can operate on different fuels like natural gas, hydrogen and propane (LPG). Fuel cells are electrochemical energy converters with efficiencies that exceed conventional power plants, already at small scale. The concept of connecting fuel cells to gas networks to power resilient urban and edge data centres overcomes the need to have backup generation in such areas, thus reducing the emissions and noise impact.
The main objectives of the proposed project are to:
The project strongly anticipates opportunities for the European fuel cell suppliers to increase their uptake across multiple markets with improved energy efficiency and cost effectiveness.
| This project has received funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking (now Clean Hydrogen Partnership) under Grant Agreement No 101007219. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research. |
