ECL unveils hydrogen-powered AI data centre

The company also announced an additional US$10 million in funding led by Hyperwise Ventures, which will be used to accelerate research and development and expand the company’s global footprint. ECL's off-grid, sustainable, modular, built-to-suit data centres are the industry’s first to be designed from the ground up to support the high densities of GPUs that are the backbone of AI infrastructure, with PUE of 1.1 and high-density deployments of up to 75 KW per rack.

ECL data centres are optimised to support the massive amounts of computational power required by AI workloads, making them ideally suited for companies seeking to deliver AI applications or to leverage AI to accelerate their own innovation and operations. They are designed to be built and operated off-grid by any company in need of scalable data centre capacity, including enterprises in addition to cloud providers and other hyperscale service providers.

ECL's support for AI infrastructure is advanced by its innovative data centre management system, ECL Lightning™, which provides real-time monitoring and control of every aspect of the data centre, from power generation to power delivery and rack cooling. Its UI gives customers comprehensive visibility and configuration capabilities, ensuring that AI and other workloads are always performing optimally.

ECL cooling innovations, including utilisation of water created from hydrogen-based power generation and proprietary rear door heat exchanger technology for high-density rack cooling, completely eliminate reliance on local resources. ECL data centres are modular, giving customers the option to expand them as needed in 1MW increments. They are also built-to-suit and can be designed and delivered in less than 12 months instead of the industry standard two-to-three years.

“Many data centre providers have identified hydrogen as the power source of choice for the future of the data centre due to its exceptional safety record, improved efficiency and reliability, sustainability, and recent technological advancements,” said Yuval Bachar, Founder and CEO of ECL. “The significant upfront cost associated with re-engineering existing facilities and transitioning to hydrogen fuel cells makes the transition prohibitive for most data centre operators, whose revenue forecasts and financial stability are rooted in the perpetuation of legacy technologies. ECL has broken the mould, embracing not only hydrogen, but the opportunity to support the ever-increasing space, power, and cooling demands of the AI industry in the race to realise all of its projected benefits."

Read the article online at: https://www.globalhydrogenreview.com/hydrogen/21062024/ecl-unveils-hydrogen-powered-ai-data-centre/