eBay has extended its data centre in Utah and powered the new build entirely by Bloom Energy fuel cells.
The extension to the online auctioneer’s data centre in South Jordan, Salt Lake City, will not have a traditional UPS, instead using the electric grid as backup.
Instead of using fuel cells as a back up power supply, it will use 30 Bloom cells for primary power and the grid for emergency power. The fuel cells will generate 1.75 million kWh of electricity each year with a total capacity of 6MW.
“Generators and UPSs are used for less than 1% of the year,” said Dean Nelson, Vice President for foundation services at eBay. “We have a huge investment of tens of millions of dollars in that. Is it really the best way to do it?”
Bloom Energy said the fuel cell powered data centre seeds the potential for a data centre to become independent of the electric grid.
The fuel cells use solid oxide to convert natural gas to energy without combustion. They make use of evaporative cooling and outside-air cooling to reduce the need for air-conditioning to the servers.
The data centre uses special container modules from Dell and HP. Dell’s “EPIC” containers are the very dense, fitting up to 1MW of power into 24 racks. HP’s new EcoPod modules designed for eBay are double-width and connect up to 1.4MW to 44 racks of servers.
eBay has chosen fuel cells as a ‘green’ approach because they use renewable energy and eliminates wasteful transmission of the power. Nelson said: “We are generating mega-watts of power on site and consuming it 100 feet away. That’s extremely efficient.”
