Verne Global and Landsvirkjun, the national power company of Iceland, today announced a collaboration which will see Verne Global trial and deploy hydrogen fuel cells to produce reliable and sustainable back-up power for its Icelandic data center campus. The two companies will work together to enable the transition to green hydrogen power produced with Iceland’s renewable energy, taking Verne Global even further with its industry-leading sustainability position. This data center project is the first of its kind in Iceland.
Verne Global’s 40 acre data center campus was designed from the ground up to provide highly specialist data center services for organisations running high intensity compute workloads, including AI, machine learning, high performance computing (HPC) and supercomputing. Iceland’s stable, 100 percent 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. Through this trial project, in the unlikely event of disruption to its primary power supply, Verne Global will use renewable hydrogen-powered generation to maintain its data center operations.
Turning back-up data center power 'green'
“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 centers.
“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 center power ‘green’,” said Dominic Ward, CEO at Verne Global.
