Microsoft announced Monday that hydrogen fuel cells have powered multiple servers in a data center for 48 consecutive hours. This life-size test is one more step for the American giant which has committed to becoming “carbon negative” by 2030. This goal means that Microsoft will have to eliminate more carbon than it emits.
In order to accelerate its strategy in favor of the ecological transition, Microsoft wishes to reduce its dependence on diesel, still by 2030. Currently, diesel fuel represents less than 1% of Microsoft’s global emissions. Its use is limited to Azure datacenters, who have just recently recovered the game Minecraft.
Like most cloud providers around the world, diesel generators are mostly used as an alternative, for example in the event of a power failure.
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Hydrogen or the miracle solution
Brian Janous, head of the data center energy program and sustainability strategy at Microsoft, sees several advantages in the use of hydrogen technology. PEM fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen in a process that produces water vapor and electricity. The use of green or carbon-free hydrogen on a large scale would make it possible to emit less CO² in the world, and thus fight against global warming.
Today, the challenge for Microsoft’s teams is to test the feasibility of this solution on their own infrastructures. Already in September 2019, Microsoft acquired a 250 kilowatt system running on hydrogen. This system could power a row of 10 servers in a data center. The tests took place near Salt Lake City at Power Innovations.
The teams plan to later test a 3 megawatt power system, which is the size of the standby generators, currently running on diesel fuel.
In the future, it is conceivable that a data center like that of Azure will be equipped and operate entirely with fuel cells, a hydrogen storage tank and an electrolyser that converts water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. In any case, this is the wish of Mark Monroe, engineer specializing in the hydrogen project for Microsoft data centers.
If it comes to pass, it could open the door to other advantages for the American company. For example, these systems could integrate with the power grid to provide web server load balancing services. With the explosion of internet traffic, this practice of distributing HTTP requests to several web servers has become essential.
More broadly, by continuing to invest in hydrogen technology, Microsoft could serve as a textbook case for the use of hydrogen fuel cells in other sectors and industries.
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