Bank charges ahead with fuel cells
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When First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO), one of the heartland's largest banks, was looking for reliable power for its new downtown data center, it could have gone the traditional route and purchased an uninterruptible power supply.
A UPS is, in effect, an onsite miniature power plant that takes raw power from the local utility company and, with battery and generator backup, can weather everything from routine power surges and sags to full-blown blackouts and still deliver a steady, even flow of electricity.
But FNBO decided to take a radical new approach that turns the concept of backup power on its head. The bank isn't using the local power utility as its primary source of electricity. Instead, it's running its 200,000-square-foot data center with electricity generated onsite by four dumpster-sized fuel cells from a Danbury, Conn., start-up company called Sure Power Corp.
The fuel cells take in natural gas and, through a chemical process, produce electricity, heat and clean water. All of NASA's manned space missions have used similar fuel cells to provide electricity and drinking water for the astronauts.
The first floor of FNBO's data center, tucked 15 feet below ground, contains two redundant pairs of fuel cells, each capable of producing 400 kilowatts of electricity. Because the data center needs a total of about 300 kilowatts of electricity, there would still be sufficient power even if two of the four fuel cells failed.
And Omaha Public Power, which delivers electricity from the power grid, has been relegated to the role of backup. In fact, it's the second backup. Sure Power's package includes a generator-powered UPS as the first backup.
"No other place in the world has four fuel cells paralleled together for the purpose of supplying computer grade power to a data center. We're it,'' says Dennis Hughes, director of property management at the Nebraska bank.
For Hughes, the decision to become a high-profile guinea pig for this new approach to data center power came down to numbers - lots of them. Typical UPS systems promise 99.9% reliability, or three nines. Adding expensive redundant features can bring UPS systems up to four nines of reliability.
That may sound awfully reliable, but three nines reliability translates into 53 minutes of downtime per year. "We can't afford that,'' says Hughes, pointing out that the bank has 6.5 million customers and is the seventh largest credit card processor in the country. The bank loses $6 million for every hour of downtime.
Sure Power claims that it can offer 99.9999%, or six nines of reliability, which means less than 3.1 seconds of downtime per year. Sure Power accomplishes this through ONSI Corp.'s proprietary combination of fuel cells, which generate the raw power, and Piller, Inc.'s UPSes, which take the raw power and regulate it into a controlled flow of electricity that stays within the voltage requirements of mainframe computers.
Of course, all those nines are merely statistical probabilities, but Hughes is determined to get the most reliable system out there. Even though the fuel cells' $3.4 million price tag was an estimated $1.2 million more than a traditional UPS, the bank decided the additional upfront jolt was worth the higher levels of reliability.
The data center's Hitachi Skyline mainframe is built to provide between five and six nines of reliability. It did not make sense to have a power supply that is less reliable than the mainframe computer it serves. And the bank had a bad experience with a traditional UPS system a few years ago during a blackout. A string of batteries failed, the data center went dark for several minutes and it took hours to get all the systems back up and running.
As an added bonus, the fuel cells will produce enough heat to keep the whole building warm in the winter and melt snow around the building using special coils built into the sidewalks.
Sure Power co-founder Art Mannion makes it clear that fuel cells aren't for everybody; this is an expensive, top-of-the-line system for places such as data centers, hospitals or other locations that absolutely can't afford to go down even for a few seconds. But he also argues that the number of companies that find themselves in need of super-reliable power is growing.
Hughes left nothing to chance when it came time to put the Sure Power system to the test. He took bank officials to Sure Power headquarters to see the fuel cells in action. And he made a trip to Piller headquarters in Middletown, N.Y., to put the product through its paces.
When Sure Power delivered the system to the new building in Omaha in mid-December, Hughes tried to push it to the limit. If it hadn't passed the onsite integration test, the bank wouldn't have accepted delivery.
Before the cutover to the new system earlier this month, Hughes had his share of butterflies. But the Sure Power system "outperformed even our wildest dreams,'' he says. The bank is using its high level of reliability as a key marketing tool as it expands its business in processing credit card transactions for smaller banks.
FNBO's decision to go with fuel cells will be closely watched by other companies with large data centers and by proponents of fuel cell technology. Hughes says he has already had scores of inquiries and has started appearing at conferences to talk about the system.
There are about 120 ONSI fuel cells in operation worldwide, says company spokesman Michael London. The cells are popular in Japan, where energy costs are higher, and they are being used in a variety of specialized applications. For example, a sewage treatment plant in Boston is using methane gas to power a fuel cell, and the town of Groton, Conn., is using landfill gas to power a fuel cell.
Fuel cell advocates, such as consultant George Kamburoff, say fuel cells are going to change the world. The highly efficient, portable power sources are the darlings of environmentalists because they are virtually emissions-free. Kamburoff says the fuel cells will bring electricity to the remaining areas of the world that don't have it. The Pleasant Hill, Calif.-based consultant says if the Sure Power system works as advertised, it could give a huge boost to the technology.
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