Equinix Facility Trials Sustainability Tech With Partners
- By CDOTrends editors
- January 25, 2022
Digital infrastructure provider Equinix has opened its first Co-Innovation Facility (CIF) to trial sustainable technologies. It is located in its DC15 International Business Exchange data center at the Equinix Ashburn Campus in the Washington, D.C. area.
A component of Equinix’s Data Centre of the Future initiative, the CIF is a new capability that enables partners to work with Equinix on trialing and developing innovations.
These innovations, such as identifying a path to clean hydrogen-enabled fuel cells or deploying more capable battery solutions, will be used to help define the future of sustainable digital infrastructure and services globally.
Sustainable innovations, including liquid cooling, high-density cooling, intelligent power management, and on-site prime power generation, will be incubated in the CIF in partnership with leading data center technology innovators, including Bloom Energy, ZutaCore, and Virtual Power Systems (VPS).
In collaboration with Equinix, these partners will test core and edge technologies focusing on proving reliability, efficiency, and cost to build.
For example, Bloom Energy will trial its generator-less and UPS-less Data Centre technology. Utilizing on-site solid oxide fuel cells enables the data center to generate redundant cleaner energy on-grid. It potentially eliminates the need for fossil fuel-powered generators and power-consuming Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems.
Deia Bayoumi, vice president for product management at Bloom Energy, said the company’s modular fuel cell technology is well-suited to meet the growing demand for clean and resilient power among data centers.
“By generating power on-site with high levels of power availability and needed resiliency, data centers can take control of their sustainable energy needs,” Bayoumi said.
“Bloom’s technology eliminates reliance on electricity utilities to meet capacity requirements as well as highly pollutive diesel generators to provide backup power.”
Another partner, ZutaCore, is working with high-density liquid cooling. The company has developed efficient, direct-on-chip, waterless, two-phase liquid-cooled rack systems capable of cooling upwards of 100 kW per rack in a light, compact design. This eliminates the risk of IT meltdown, minimizes the use of scarce resources, including energy, land, construction, and water, and dramatically shrinks the data center footprint.
Last year, Equinix became the first in the data center industry to commit to globally reaching climate-neutral status by 2030, backed by science-based targets and an aggressive sustainability innovation agenda.
Image credit: iStockphoto/metamorworks
