DNO’s sister company brokers hydrogen-ready fuel cell on-site power for Manchester data centre

Cloud hosting and data centre provider Teledata and Conrad Energy have agreed to install an initial 1.2MW of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) from Bloom Energy at Teledata’s data centre in Manchester. Conrad Energy will fully fund the installation of the hydrogen-ready SOFCs and the fuel cells will operate under a long-term power purchase agreement
“It is becoming incredibly important for data centres to take control of their energy supply, both for technical and commercial certainty and for sustainability reasons. This solution not only reduces our carbon emissions through a cleaner, hydrogen ready fuel supply, but it also gives us a second power feed into the facility from a completely different fuel source – a European data centre industry first,” said Matt Edgley, director at Teledata.
Mark Kelly, Conrad Energy’s head of power solutions, said, “On site generation from fuel cells is a viable solution which is available today”.
Teledata and Conrad Energy were introduced via Electricity North West (Construction and Maintenance) Limited (ENWCML), a non-regulated division of the Electricity North West Group, which also owns distribution network operator (DNO) Electricity Northwest. ENWCML said it is working with Conrad Energy and Bloom Energy in a strategic collaboration to offer similar hydrogen-ready, ‘behind the meter’ applications to its customer base. “To be able to announce the first collaboration with one of our existing customers so quickly evidences the huge potential fuel cell technology has for the UK energy sector,” said Charles Hesketh, ENWCML market sector manager.