I was at 7x24 Exchange and there was keynote by eBay on Quantitative Comparison of Critical Facility Electrical System Architectures. In this presentation eBay said they are the first Fuel-cel powered data center. My immediate thought was, “hey didn’t we have someone else say they had the first fuel cel powered center present at 7x24?” I checked the 7x24 Exchange conference program and yep one year ago was the presentation by First National Bank of Omaha.

Then I was thinking maybe I misheard what was said. eBay hit the news with its fuel-cel powered data center and found Sept 2013 so its not anything new that eBay has the 1st fuel-cel powered data center in the news

eBay turns on first-of-its-kind fuel cell-powered data center

SUMMARY:

The world’s first data center powered primarily with fuel cells has finally been switched on in Utah by its owner, eBay. Its an unusual test bed which will give eBay insight into cleaner power and distributed energy.

Digging further I found on the official eBay site that the eBay data center is the first Bloom Energy Servers used as primary power for a data center.

Our newest data center is the first in the world to use Bloom Energy Servers™ as the primary, on-site power source, instead of the traditional electric utility grid.

So eBay is the first data center powered by Bloom Energy Fuel cels, not the first data center powered by fuel cels. Maybe I did mishear the presentation, and eBay said this is the first bloom energy fuel cels used as primary power for a data center.

Here is the 7x24 Exchange video of FNB discussing the lifecycle issues of running fuel cels for 14 years. It was quite informative.