A building on Microsoft’s Dublin data centre campus will be powered by green hydrogen from the ESB in a European first for the tech giant.
The ESB-Microsoft pilot project, set to run for eight weeks, will supply the Grange Castle data centre’s power control and administration building with up to 250kW of clean energy over the period.
The pilot project is part of ESB’s plan to showcase the versatility of hydrogen fuel technology in different power applications.
“ESB believes green hydrogen will play an important role in the net-zero energy system of the future,” said Jim Dollard, ESB executive director for Generation and Trading.
Green hydrogen is produced when renewable electricity is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called electrolysis. This process releases only one byproduct – pure water.
ESB’s zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells convert stored green hydrogen into electricity and do not produce any carbon emissions or harmful pollutants such as particulate matter, sulphur dioxide or nitrogen oxides, the partnership claims.