PowerCell has signed an agreement with a US-based hydrogen powered data centre provider to supply two PS190 power systems, for field validation in a data-centre application. The systems will be delivered on a 6 - 12-month lease, starting in Q1 2026, and will be integrated with PowerCell’s Distributed Master Controller (DMC).
“This data centre provider is a pioneer in data-centre operation, looking for solutions that combine resilience, scalability and zero-emission operation,” said Richard Berkling, CEO of PowerCell Group. “This agreement gives both companies a platform to validate performance and integration in a demanding application where reliability and power quality are critical. We have taken the time to design a product portfolio that is industrial, cost-competitive, and optimised for power-generation duty cycles. This is a natural next step in our strategy.”
Integration with PowerCell’s DMC platform
The systems will be integrated with PowerCell’s Distributed Master Controller (DMC), the control architecture designed to coordinate and optimise multiple fuel-cell units as a unified system. Leveraging PowerCell’s experience from aviation and marine multi-unit environments, the DMC provides:
- Intelligent load balancing for higher uptime.
- Improved durability through optimised operating points.
- Stable system performance under dynamic and mission-critical loads.
- A single, simplified interface for supervisory control.
For data-centre applications, where resilience and continuity are fundamental, the DMC provides the system-level behaviour required to evaluate fuel cells as part of next-generation power designs.
Hydrogen as a complement in modern data-centre power
Growing compute demand, grid constraints, and the need for local zero-emission power are opening new opportunities for hydrogen in data-centre design. Hydrogen fuel cell systems can complement existing infrastructure where:
- Grid access is constrained.
- Power demand grows faster than local expansion.
- Longer-duration, low-emission backup is required.
"PowerCell is leading the way in stationary hydrogen fuel cell solutions for data centres, providing clean, reliable, and cost-effective power," said the Founder and CEO of the data centre provider. "This partnership marks a significant step toward enabling large scale deployment of fuel cells and delivering supplemental power for AI inference at edge locations."
“Hydrogen will not replace established solutions overnight, but it will become an important complement where grid availability, resilience and long-duration backup increasingly matter,” commented Berkling. “This agreement with the data centre provider reflects a clear, early movement in that direction.”