A New eBay Data Center Powered By Fuel Cells

Becoming serious about greener technologies eBay has announced that a new data center which will be made in Utah will be completely powered by fuel cells. This is a step that many companies feared to take because fuel cells are not a very proven technology yet. eBay  already has a data center in South Jordan .The old data center completely relies on electricity from the grid but the new data center will have a backup system that will take power from the grid in case something goes wrong with the fuel cells.

Over the past decade fuel cell technology has improved and so has the drive of moving towards greener technologies. Fuel cells are no more called hydrogen fuel cells because now they can use other fluids such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol but eBay will only be using hydrogen fuel cells. In fuel cell chemical energy from a fuel is converted into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Every fuel cell has an anode and cathode.By products are released in very small amount which are carbon dioxide, water and depending on the fuel anything else. Hence making it a greener source of electricity with almost no carbon dioxide emission. Fuel cells are more efficient because electricity is produced on the site where is required no electricity is lost during transmission which is usually lost through the transmission lines.

Bloom Energy is the company that will make enough cells to provide estimated 6 million watt power that will be needed. The data center will hopefully be completed by the July next year.