Verne Global, Landsvirkjun fuel data centre with hydrogen
Sustainable data centre solutions provider Verne Global, and Landsvirkjun, the national power company of Iceland, have announced a partnership in which Verne Global will trial and deploy hydrogen fuel cells to produce reliable and sustainable back-up power for its data centre campus in Iceland.
The two companies will work together to enable the transition to green hydrogen power produced with Iceland’s renewable energy. The project is the first of its kind in Iceland.
Verne Global’s 40 acre data centre campus was designed from the ground up to provide highly specialist data centre services for organisations running high intensity compute workloads, including AI, machine learning, high performance computing (HPC) and supercomputing. Iceland’s stable, 100% renewable-powered energy grid ensures Verne Global can provide these customers with long-term price visibility, while the local climate supports free cooling 365 days a year. The company says that, “through this trial project, in the unlikely event of disruption to its primary power supply, it will use renewable hydrogen-powered generation to maintain its data centre operations.”
Verne Global’s data centre project to provide key insights into using hydrogen power
“We’re really looking forward to working with Verne Global on this project and helping them further capitalise on Iceland’s inimitable ability to provide green energy,” said Hörður Arnarson, CEO, Landsvirkjun. “We’re proud to undertake this pioneering project with an industry leader, which will in turn provide us with key insights into leveraging hydrogen power across Iceland and beyond.”
Icelandic New Energy, which has more than two decades’ worth of experience in hydrogen energy transition in Iceland, will oversee the project and conduct a study, which will serve to offer guidance to the wider industry on the viability of hydrogen fuel cell back-up for data centres.
“We’re constantly searching for ways to improve our already market-leading sustainability credentials, so we jumped at the opportunity to work with Landsvirkjun and Icelandic New Energy to turn even our back-up data centre power ‘green’,” said Dominic Ward, CEO at Verne Global.
About Verne Global
Verne Global delivers data centre solutions for high intensity computing, engineered for optimal high performance compute and built upon 100% renewable energy. Our clean grid and stable climate cuts costs and energy usage, and our expert team provides on-site, around-the-clock support to maximise performance and flexibility for customer workloads.
Founded in 2012, our Icelandic data centre campus powers some of the world’s most innovative and demanding industries, including financial services, earth sciences, life sciences, engineering, scientific research and AI.