Fuel cell technology has been gradually getting greater acceptance in
the datacenter world. Getting end-to-end control of the power production aspect
of datacenter energy requirements allows a business to more carefully control
expenses and model future spending more accurately. But fuel cells, due
to the nature of their production, are inherently expensive, which makes
considerations o their use limited to only companies with significant budget
for datacenter energy cost capital expenditures.
In the white paper “No More Electrical Infrastructure: Towards Fuel Cell Powered Data
Centers” Microsoft Research examines the potential cost savings of using fuel
cells to power datacenters. While that may seem like an oxymoron, based on the
clear issues of fuel cell costs, Microsoft makes a clear case for the economics
of scale in the production of fuel cells on a level not currently contemplated.
They do this by postulating the development of the rack-level fuel cell.
In this model, rather than supplying an entire datacenter with power, the goal
is to deliver power to a single rack. The Microsoft model postulates that
doubling production volume would reduce the costs by 20 percent. For the small
fuel cell that would be used in a rack system, their analysis used a cost of
$3-5/W and a service life of 5 years.
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