Verne Global and Landsvirkjun to fuel Icelandic Data Center’s backup power with hydrogen
The project will enable the transition to green hydrogen power produced with Iceland’s renewable energy.
Verne Global (a provider of sustainable data centre solutions for high-intensity computing) and Landsvirkjun (the national power company of Iceland) today has announced collaboration on hydrogen.
The collaboration will see Verne Global trial and deploy hydrogen fuel cells to produce reliable and sustainable backup power for its Icelandic data centre 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 centre 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 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. Through this trial project, in the unlikely event of a disruption to its primary power supply, Verne Global will use renewable hydrogen-powered generation to maintain its data centre operations.
Icelandic New Energy, which has more than two decades’ worth of experience in the 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 backup for data centers.
Hörður Arnarson, CEO of Landsvirkjun, said, “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.”
Dominic Ward, CEO at Verne Global, said, “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 backup data center power ‘green’.”
