Apple data center helps fuel Bloom Energy move to East Coast | Cutting Edge – CNET News

Bloom Energy

On the day Bloom Energy officially opened shop on the East Coast, the company’s CEO confirmed Bloom will supply fuel cells to Apple’s North Carolina data center.

Bloom Energy today is breaking ground on a factory in Newark, Delaware to build its Bloom Energy Servers, or Bloom Boxes, which produce electricity from natural gas or biogas.

The facility, which was a former Chrysler plant, will have the capacity to turn out 1,000 Bloom Boxes a year, Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar said in an interview with CNET. Each fuel cell, which is the size of few refrigerators, can generate 100 kilowatts of electric power.

Sridhar also confirmed that Apple’s Maiden, North Carolina data center will use Bloom’s fuel cells. The data center, now under construction, will have 4.8 megawatts worth of fuel cells powered by biogas. It is expected to be the largest corporate fuel cell installation.

Read More at: Apple data center helps fuel Bloom Energy move to East Coast | Cutting Edge – CNET News.

Microsoft Designing Landfill-Fueled, Off-Grid Data Center : TreeHugger

Microsoft Data Center

Microsoft has launched a new research project that it’s calling its Data Plant program where the tech giant will design and prototype a data center fueled by biogas, located right at the source. The data center will be powered by fuel cells that run on biogas captured directly from an on-site landfill or wastewater treatment plant, both rich sources of methane, instead of using biogas from the grid.

For more read: Microsoft Designing Landfill-Fueled, Off-Grid Data Center : TreeHugger.