eBay To Power Main Data Center With Bloom Energy Fuel Cell Farm

Internet giant eBay has announced it will be teaming up with Bloom Energy to power its services through cleaner energy. The announcement has said the main data center in Utah will use a Bloom Energy fuel cell farm as its main source of power.

eBay is obviously a company in need of a lot of power for its many servers, similar to Apple who also recently began using a fuel cell farm through Bloom Energy “servers”. The fact that companies as large as these are starting to use cleaner options such as fuel cells is a great indication of how far clean energy has come.

The partnership between eBay and Bloom will create the country’s largest non-utility fuel cell installation, double the size of the company’s current Utah data center location. It will incorporate 30 Bloom Energy servers into its architecture. In the event of an emergency, the national electric utility grid will be on standby for backup.

The data center will be powered by a 6 megawatt fuel cell farm, expected to be complete and ready to operate in 2013. Each of the 30 Bloom Energy servers will generate 1.75 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, and will be powered by biogas to keep the system as clean and gentle on the environment as possible.

This data center already has some clean energy coming in from a 665 kilowatt solar array on the roof. The company has also installed a 650 kilowatt solar array and a 500 kilowatt Bloom fuel cell farm at its headquarters in San Jose, as well as a 100 kilowatt solar array at its data center in Denver.

“We believe the future of commerce can be greener,” said John Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay Inc. in a statement. “By being a trail blazer and deploying a brand new, revolutionary architecture to build its new data center, eBay is raising the standard for the entire industry. It is 21st century infrastructure for the industry needs of the 21st century.” He added that by “running our data centers primarily on reliable, renewable energy, we intend to shape a future for commerce that is more environmentally sustainable at its core.”

via NYTimes
Image: Bloom energy servers installed at eBay headquarters in San Jose