Leading Japanese companies Honda and Mitsubishi are jointly testing the feasibility of powering data centers using recycled fuel cells from electric vehicles. They use hydrogen, which is created as a byproduct of an industrial process. The companies will begin the two-year project in the city of Shuhan in March.

The goal, of course, is to reduce the environmental footprint of energy-consuming data centers by tackling their carbon emissions. In the test phase, a Honda stationary fuel system will power a Mitsubishi distributed data center. According to The Register, Honda is using recycled fuel cells from electric vehicles to develop this central processing unit. A third Japanese company, Tokuyama Corporation, is responsible for supplying hydrogen to the fuel plant. This hydrogen is broken down as a byproduct of its saltwater electrolysis activities.

reduce costs

The Japanese organization New Energy and Industrial Technology Development (NEDO) proposed the project, which aims to think about ways to reduce costs for organizations. The installation and operation of stationary fuel cell systems should ultimately contribute to the decarbonization of the power supply. Since it is not known which Mitsubishi data center was included in the test, it is also not clear how much electricity the recycled fuel cell system should be able to supply.

The choice of hydrogen is not new and therefore no surprise. The fuel has long been seen as a way to make transport and energy supply more environmentally friendly. For data centers, this can be done either as a backup in place of diesel generators or as the primary power source itself. Dutch data center company NorthC claimed in 2022 to be the first company to use a hydrogen-powered fuel cell module for backup generators.

Variations of “clean hydrogen”

Hydrogen is a clean fuel because only water is produced as a byproduct when consumed in a fuel cell. The only problem is how to produce the hydrogen itself. Most hydrogen is currently produced from methane gas in an energy-intensive process. Fossil fuels are often the driving force behind the process. Perhaps this is also how Tokuyama produces hydrogen as a byproduct of salt water electrolysis. To speak of green or other color variants, hydrogen must be produced using renewable energy such as wind or solar energy or other clean sources.

The project will also explore the possibility of using hydrogen for grid balancing applications. Microsoft is already experimenting with this in its data center in Dublin. This system enables energy to be fed back into the grid if necessary. This function must accommodate possible fluctuations in the power supply due to possible unavailability of renewable energy sources.