Utility Net Zero Data center of the future: Resilient, Reliable, Sustainable and Grid Scale

InfraPrime, a net zero startup based in Switzerland, is a member to the European Project E2P2 on Low Carbon Fuel Cell Development

Microsoft is a Cloud Data Center pioneer led clean energy transition for its global fleets in Gigawatt scale as well as delivering carbon free energy benefits to its communities through its clean energy and carbon removal investments. In collaboration to continue innovating towards a Carbon Free Economy, both signed an agreement for InfraPrime to assume the asset’s ownership of STARK architecture. Both are committed to its ambitious pledges to scale data center as an industry to achieve carbon neutrality goals in partnership with the grid utilities. .

“Utility Data Center is a critical catalyst to a green grid and as industry partners on the supply side of a carbon free economy; to tackle the challenge of power capacity for the growth of the Future of Data Centers,” said Susanna Kass, ranks first in the top 10 Sustainability Leaders and most influential leaders to follow by Linkedin, Inc. Magazine and the CIO Women Magazine; and for five consecutive years as the top 50 Climate Change leader, topmost Clean Energy influential global leaders to promote Carbon Free Economy. “Absolute Zero Data Center design enables the delivery of 24/7 resilient, clean power from the grid for the Future of Data Centers cloud and particularly, the AI DC systems; affordable, available clean grid power with sustainability benefits to scale.”

In the past decade, Dr. Alberto Ravagni, co-founder, MD, InfraPrime, a clean energy architect, uses his expert knowledge of the fuel cell systems to generate onsite clean energy to describe the EU Clean Energy Standard. Christian Belady, Vice President Microsoft Cloud and Innovation is an industry pioneer who invented PUE metric for the Data Center industry led Microsoft Advanced Research with exemplary innovation performance. Sean James, Microsoft Senior Director of Datacenter Research led the Advanced Energy Lab in Seattle worked on the STARK architecture, generated clean 24/7 power using an innovative design with zero downtime. "What makes this project so disruptive is how radically it simplifies the process of powering servers and..this could almost double the energy efficiency of data centers"
"Microsoft’s fuel-cell concept would eliminate.. generators, stacks of batteries, transformers, bundles of electrical cables"

Microsoft made bold plans, and has demonstrated the elimination of back-up diesel generators using hydrogen fuel cells. “What we just witnessed was, for the data center industry, a moon landing moment,” said Sean James. “We have a generator that produces no emissions. It’s mind-blowing.”

“These innovations are proven; the architecture and projects are recognized by the DCD Mission Critical awards not once but twice; in 2017 and 2020.” said Dr. Alberto Ravagni, MD, InfraPrime. “InfraPrime architecture is grid scale to power Net Zero Data Centers, built on the foundation of Microsoft STARK architecture, adheres to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG), the EU Clean Energy standards with the E2P2 Project”.

The Utility Data Center of the Future delivers resilient, reliable and net-zero power to data centers. 

It eliminates diesel back-up power generators using hydrogen fuel cells for long-duration back-up power in addition to the short-term UPS and battery storage.

The generating assets are integrated and operated as a local microgrid, which can be the primary power source, and deliver grid services and storage for grid renewables.

Alternatively, the grid can be the  primary power source and the microgrid the back-up power solution.

The data center is connected to Utility Data Center architecture with an independent dual power input, delivering resilience and reliability.

The architecture is supplier agnostic, using the industry standards for fuel cells, for which InfraPrime leads the definition.

Heat reuse to community

To transfer the heat recovered from the data center, conventional district energy systems use water with often two independent supply and return piping systems for heat and cold.

Using CO2 as a district heating or cooling fluid at an intermediate temperature isa game-changing solution which offer following advantages:

Summary of the advantages of CO2 networks compared with water networks:

• 8X higher energy density than water: 198 kJ/kg CO2 vs. 14.3 kJ/kg Water

• Compact, small, flexible light pipes

• High efficiency, lower losses (the 2 pipes are at the same temperature)

• Use only 2 pipes for heating AND cooling using the same infrastructure

• Lower installation costs, Faster and flexible deployment

• Easily scalable

• Commercially available: Used in 30,000 commercial installation (in single building)

In addition, the CO2 piping infrastructure can be used to collect the CO2 captured by the fuel cells. Fuel Cells can be designed not to release the CO2 in the atmosphere, but to capture it and inject it into a CO2 pipes network. The emission from an entire data center campus, or an entire city can be captured and delivered to a single storage point.

When the fuel used is biogas or RNG and the emissions are captured, the Utility Data Center has negative total carbon emissions.

Delivering multiple services using the same infrastructure: power, heating, cooling, capture and remove CO2 greatly increases the efficiency and profitability of the infrastructure.

ESG reporting

The Utility Data Centers also receive ESG reports with Utilities clean energy grid metrics of green proofs, soon is required by the European Parliament and EU council proclamation rules to banning green offsets claims.