IT managers look to hydrogen fuel cells
At a data facility in Germantown, Md., the Energy Department runs its most mission-critical operations: office management applications; e-mail services; network management; personnel, procurement, financial and project management applications; and others.
That’s why Jake Wooley, deputy director of Energy’s information technology management office, worries what might happen if the East Coast’s power grid failed.
Like IT managers at a handful of other federal agencies, Wooley has begun studying whether hydrogen fuel cells could be used as an alternate power source for the Energy Department’s primary data center.
Besides the promise of offering greater energy security, fuel cells come with another benefit, Wooley says: less ozone-damaging pollution than traditional energy sources. Fuel cells generate energy through a hydrogen reaction, which is cleaner than energy produced by combustion at coal-fired power plants.
One drawback: Fuel cells may be too large to install near many Washington buildings. Finding space for fuel cells — some of which can be the size of half a semi-truck — is a challenge for agencies and companies, said Frank Wolak, vice president of business development for FuelCell Energy, a Connecticut-based company consulting with agencies on fuel cell technology.
“Those buildings were designed to be esthetically pleasing. … The building stock is also old, so there’s not a lot of mechanical space for fuel cells,” he said.
Nevertheless, the Commerce and Interior departments are talking with a local utility company and a fuel cell manufacturer about installing fuel cells for their Washington headquarters. Commerce has considered placing fuel cells in the courtyard.
