SAN JOSE, Calif. – Bloom Energy a power capacity agreement with Intel Corporation that will result in Silicon Valley’s largest fuel cell-powered high-performance computing data center.
The agreement calls for the installation of additional megawatts (MW) of Bloom Energy’s fuel cell-based Energy Server at Intel’s existing high-performance computing data center in Santa Clara, CA. The additional capacity expands an existing Bloom Energy fuel cell installation already deployed at the tech giant’s location since 2014. The resulting installation will be the single largest fuel cell-powered high-performance computing data center in Silicon Valley.
Bloom’s fuel cell technology offers an ideal power solution for energy-intensive data centers that demand reliable electricity generation. Bloom’s offerings can be deployed as Grid Parallel in conjunction with utility power to meet dual source energy needs of a Data Center or as Grid Independent by completely avoiding transmission infrastructure. With the ability to operate in a fully islanded microgrid mode, Grid Independent configurations circumvent delays, costs, and constraints associated with grid-based power and can be deployed in weeks on a skid mounted, moveable platform.
“Bloom Energy is proud to be a long-term supplier to Intel and to support the company’s data center capacity building at a time when the grid is severely constrained,” said Ravi Prasher, Bloom Energy’s Chief Technology Officer. “Bloom Energy technology is compatible with hydrogen fuel in addition to natural gas. We are working with governments and industries to adopt hydrogen as a primary fuel when it becomes economically viable. Intel’s confidence in our fuel cell technology is a testament to Bloom’s ability to reliably meet the energy needs of cutting edge and high-performance IT infrastructure.”
“Intel is leading the industry in extreme energy-efficient high-performance computing data centers with existing hyperscale Intel Santa Clara Data Center operating at 1.06 PUE, enabling the HPC scale needed for complex Intel chip design and technology development,” said Shesha Krishnapura, Intel Fellow, and Intel IT Chief Technology Officer. “Intel HPC Data Center infrastructure currently powers 400,000+ Intel® Xeon® based servers (5+ million highest clock cores), 700+ petabytes of storage, and 800,000+ network ports. To meet additional HPC scale needed for Intel Products and Intel Foundry, Intel is leveraging Bloom Energy technology to power the next Data Center expansion.”
As the energy demands of data centers surge across the globe, Bloom Energy’s fuel cells offer a proven solution. Rapidly deployable, on-site energy generation provides operators with the ability to scale to meet the future needs of ever-changing businesses.