By Kennedy Maize
Last month, iconic Texas-based technology giant Oracle Corp. announced a deal with California’s Bloom Energy to develop a behind-the-meter 2.45-GW artificial intelligence data center in the New Mexico desert, dubbed Project Juniper, powered by Bloom’s fuel cells.
The announcement said, “This updated power design will replace Project Jupiter’s previously planned gas turbines and diesel generators and consolidate the facility into one single microgrid campus.”
Oracle expanded: “Fuel cells generate electricity without combustion, meaning the Bloom microgrid is highly efficient with low emissions and water use. Compared to its previously planned gas turbines, Project Jupiter with the Bloom microgrid will reduce NOₓ emissions by approximately 92% and will use a negligible amount of water.” 
In a news release, Bloom Energy, which had an existing deal with Oracle, said its fuel cells “provide fast, reliable power suited for AI workloads, which require rapid, load‑following support that traditional grids were not designed to deliver. Bloom’s systems are built to support higher-density AI workloads more efficiently, with a technology platform aligned to emerging standards such as 800 V dc.”
Last year, Bloom brags, it “delivered a fully operational fuel cell system to Oracle in just 55 days—more than a month ahead of the anticipated 90‑day deployment schedule.”
While most attention on the technology for stand-alone power to supply data centers has centered on gas turbines, which are in short supply with long waits, expensive and polluting diesel generators, land gobbling solar and wind, or so-far fictional small modular nuclear reactors.
Fuel cells exist, have been in wide use for decades, and offer substantial benefits over the presumed incumbent generating technologies. They don’t rely on combustion, they have a small footprint, operate continuously, and deliver direct current power that produces water and reduces the complexity of the electrical interface and the heat output of the center.
Fuel cells generate electricity through electrochemical reactions between a fuel (often pure hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (typically oxygen) without combustion.
As the Department of Energy describes it, “A fuel cell consists of two electrodes—a negative electrode (or anode) and a positive electrode (or cathode)—sandwiched around an electrolyte. A fuel, such as hydrogen, is fed to the anode, and air is fed to the cathode….The electrons go through an external circuit, creating a flow of electricity. The protons migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where they reunite with oxygen and the electrons to produce water and heat.” 
The technology was discovered in the first half of the 19th Century, although who actually made the discovery is in dispute. DOE claims German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838 conducted the first scientific research. Welsh historian Iwan Rhys Morus of Aberystwyth University claims the true inventor was fellow Welshman William Robert Grove in 1842.
More than a dozen firms are active in the fuel cell market, using somewhat different ways to implement the technology. Here are four publicly-traded companies using different approaches to the basic fuel cell electrochemical process identified this month as worth following by The Motley Fool online investment analysis service.
- San Jose’s Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE), founded in 2001. Bloom uses solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, fueled either with elemental hydrogen, or natural gas, by stripping off the hydrogen atoms in the methane (CH4). The electrolyte is ceramic. By many accounts, this approach is best suited for stationary power generation.
- FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ: FCEL), founded in 1969 and based in Danbury, Conn. The company employs natural gas as a fuel and molten carbonate electrolyte technology and is also aimed at the AI data center market. The molten carbon electrolyte is similar to the SOFC approach. It is composed of a molten carbonate salt mixture suspended in a porous, chemically inert ceramic lithium aluminum oxide matrix.
- Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG), of Latham, N.Y. and founded in 1997 as a joint venture between DTE Energy and Mechanical Technology Inc., using hydrogen directly as a fuel in “proton exchange membrane” (PEM) technology. The cells consist of membrane electrode assemblies, which include the electrodes, electrolyte, catalyst, and gas diffusion layers. An ink of catalyst, carbon, and electrode are sprayed or painted onto the solid electrolyte and carbon paper is hot pressed on either side to protect the inside of the cell and also act as electrodes. The Plug Power fuel cells are in commercial service for materials handling such as forklifts. The company is also looking at stationary power applications.
- Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP), a Canadian firm also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, founded in 1979, was a pioneer in PEM technology and has focused on transportation applications such as buses, trucks, materials handling equipment. The company says it has shipped over 400 MW of fuel cell products to date. It is also eyeing the stationary power market.
Will fuel cell firms make a dent in the hot data center market? Bloom Energy’s deal with Oracle suggests that might happen, as the technology has attractive attributes compared to the current roster of players. The growing political discomfort over AI data centers’ impact on electric rates, which gives momentum to keeping them off the grid, may also give fuel cells market momentum.
Adding to that is the recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. that the surge in data centers on the grid could create serious reliability problems. In a May 4 announcement, NERC issued a system reliability report based on “observed customer-initiated large load reductions and significant oscillations that occur in seconds, leaving little or no room for real-time responses, threatening [bulk power system] reliability.”
Then there is a possible oddball technology development that may come to surprise the market: coal-fired fuel cells, something the White House could quickly and warmly embrace. The TechRadar web site reported last week that Chinese scientists at Shenzhen University are claiming to have developed a fuel cell that “instead of setting coal on fire, the system pulverizes the fuel into a fine powder, then dries and purifies it. The processed material then undergoes surface treatment to optimize its reactivity for an electrochemical environment.”
The article describes what is essentially a PEM fuel cell that can use the pulverized coal “with potential efficiency reaching up to 90%” while “managing carbon without releasing it.” Technical wizardry or a repeat of the 1989 “cold fusion” frenzy that quickly fizzled out?