Data center startup EdgeCloudLink (ECL) has delivered its first hydrogen-powered modular data center.

First reported in Silicon Angle, the modular data center has been deployed at ECL’s inaugural site in Mountain View, California.

ECL first announced plans to build 3D-printed, hydrogen-powered off-grid data centers in January 2023.

The first customer at the facility is cloud-based bare metal server provider Cato Digital Inc.

ECL said its modular data centers are designed from the ground up to support high densities of graphics processing units, which are increasingly in demand due to generative AI workloads.

The modular data centers use water, created by the hydrogen-based power generation systems, for cooling. This is combined with rear-door heat exchange technology.

The company claims its modular data centers have no carbon emissions and low noise levels. The modular offering can also be built using 3D printers, making them cheaper and faster to deploy.

The hydrogen power comes from fuel cells located within each data center. For larger deployments, ECL will deploy multiple data centers on-site.

ECL added its data centers have a PUE of 1.05 and offer the advantage of being deployed practically anywhere, even in the absence of network connectivity. In such examples, ECL can provide connectivity using fiber optic cables and cloud interconnect via a network-as-a-service model.

The company’s first data center, built for cloud service provider Cato Digital, is catered to cloud service providers, but the company can support enterprises too. In addition, ECL offers a build-and-operate model in which it manages the data center on the customer’s behalf.

This comes as the company closes on a $10m investment from Hyperwise Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate research and development efforts to expand the company’s global footprint.

The initial build of the facility was funded by Molex and Hyperwise, totaling an investment of $7 million.

Yuval Bachar, CEO and founder of ECL, said: “ECL has broken the mold, 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 realize all of its projected benefits.”

Dean Nelson, CEO at Cato Digital, said: “ECL is contributing to the advancement of global data center sustainability initiatives in an unprecedented way, setting a new standard for excellence in the design, development, and delivery of hydrogen-powered facilities that no one had thought could be brought to market for five or more years.”

Critics of hydrogen-powered data centers have said hydrogen is often made from fossil fuels and is arguably worse than its fossil sources, as energy is lost in the process.

Last year, Bachar told DCD: “We will show publicly in the next few weeks that getting hydrogen from any source and any color today to run data enters is superior to any grid in the world from a sustainability perspective. Even if you take a gray hydrogen and deliver it by a truck you’re still going to cut the emissions of the data center by 60 to 70 percent.”

At the time, Bachar also added the company intended to 3D-printing the modular offering off-site as it was the most sustainable way of doing construction. He added that the waste hot water will be distributed to neighbors.