US fuel cell developer Bloom Energy has extended a fuel cell supply agreement with US data center operator Equinix.

The partnership will see fuel cells deployed across 19 data centers, with a combined capacity exceeding 100MW.

The partnership focuses on the US market, and has already facilitated the deployment and operation of 75MW of fuel cell capacity, with a further 30MW under construction.

“Our fuel cells are supplementing grid power at 19 Equinix IBX data centers in six states with cleaner and reliable onsite power,” said Aman Joshi, chief commercial officer at Bloom Energy.

The partnership was initially signed in 2015 with a 1MW pilot program at a single Equinix IBX data center in Silicon Valley.

Bloom Energy develops a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power generator that can take various fuel inputs, including liquid or gas hydrocarbons. It is a modular solution, with each 65kW module completely independent from the others. This provides redundancy, so if one fuel cell fails, the others can be ramped up to cover the shortfall. The cells, on average, function for at least ten years and, according to the company, provide several advantages over utility connections.

Speaking with DCD, Jeff Barber, Bloom's VP of global data center sales, provided further context, contending that the cells “not only improve reliability but eliminate the need for constructing new transmission lines and substations-very long lead projects. [In addition], deploying onsite generation eliminates the impact to the community and other businesses.”

Bloom has signed several supply agreements over the past year. Most notably, last November, it inked a 100MW supply agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) for up to 1GW of supply. AEP plans to colocate the SOFCs at AI data center sites to help support the installation's immediate power needs.

Before this, in July, GPU cloud provider CoreWeave announced it was set to deploy Bloom fuel cells at a data center owned by Chirisa Technology Parks in Volo, Illinois. The fuel cells are set to be commissioned in Q3 2025.

However, Bloom also suffered some setbacks in 2024. In June, Amazon canceled a contract with the firm to provide gas-powered fuel cells to its data center operations in Oregon.

In 2023, the two companies signed an agreement that would have seen Bloom provide fuel cells with a capacity of 24MW to three of Amazon's data center sites.

However, Morrow County gets most of its electricity via hydropower, and the state regulator, the Oregon Department of Environment Quality, said that using fuel cells would lead to facilities emitting the equivalent of 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. Ultimately, Amazon withdrew from the plan to use fuel cells.

Carbon Capture

Bloom has also made a firm commitment to the carbon capture sector, signing a partnership with Chart Industries.

The companies will aim to use Chart's carbon capture technology to process Bloom’s high-purity carbon dioxide exhaust stream into outputs ready for utilization or sequestration. This approach will enable immediate carbon reuse while the long-term sequestration infrastructure expands, they said.

“Our partnership with Chart aims to demonstrate that cost-effective, onsite baseload power from natural gas with carbon capture is feasible at scale,” said KR Sridhar, founder, chairman, and CEO at Bloom Energy.

Chart Industries CEO Jill Evanko said: “We are excited to bring this expertise to Bloom and their unique platform which is capable of not just producing reliable power but also a concentrated CO2 stream.”