ECL to offer hydrogen-powered off-grid modular data centers

ECL has announced $7 million in seed funding, with plans to build the first 3D-printed modular data center to be powered by green hydrogen in California. The first facility will be built at its headquarters in Mountain View, using a construction 3D printer and a local building services company. Musing about the project, ECL Founder and CEO Yuval Bachar said that there's no waiting around for decades for the data centers of the future, and that they'll be brought to life in 2023.

With $7 million of funding from Molex and Hyperwise, the pilot is expected to be available by the second quarter of 2023. According to Bachar, the company intends to introduce data centers that help rather than harm the community; community-integrated data centers that are zero-emission and zero-water.

Built as on-demand 1MW units, the 3D construction printer will reportedly use environmentally-friendly building materials, with the facility powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which will be supplied from an on-site tank filled by a local hydrogen supplier. The data center will also have extra fuel cell capacity. According to the company, while traditional data centers typically cost between $12 million and $15 million per MW to build, the technology from ECL costs have the price. 

Speaking about the potential of hydrogen, Bachar believes that hydrogen is capable of delivering more than just backup energy, and even more so since building a hydrogen economy has been prioritized by the Biden administration. Meanwhile, in Europe, he explained that he doesn't believe hydrogen availability will be a "major issue."