Renewable Innovations Joins National Laboratory of the Rockies Collaboration to Advance Fuel Cell Power for AI Data Centers
Renewable Innovations Joins National Laboratory of the Rockies Collaboration to Advance Fuel Cell Power for AI Data Centers
Partnership will develop and validate fuel cell systems to meet the rapidly expanding power demands of AI infrastructure
For Immediate Release. October 22, 2026. Lindon, UT
Renewable Innovations, a leader in hydrogen fuel cell technologies and integration, today announced its participation in a new three-year collaborative research and development project led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR). The project aims to advance fuel cell-powered solutions for the energy demands of artificial intelligence data centers.
The project, “FC-DC: Fuel Cell Solutions for Brownfield and Greenfield Data Centers,” was selected through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office (AFFO) initiative focused on using fuel cells to meet the increasing demands of the AI revolution. NLR is the project lead with Renewable Innovations and a group of technology and industry partners.
“AI is redefining what data centers need from their power infrastructure,” said Bob Mount, President and CEO of Renewable Innovations. “More than seven years ago, we demonstrated that hydrogen fuel cells could provide reliable power for data centers. Today, we’re building on that foundation to deliver the high density, resilient power needed for the AI era.”
Bringing Fuel Cell Power Directly to the Compute Rack
The project will investigate how tightly coupled fuel cell and compute-rack architectures can support the demanding, dynamic power profiles of AI workloads while improving efficiency, reliability and simplicity. As part of the project, Renewable Innovations will design, develop, build and validate a fuel cell rack system designed to power and cool a high-power compute rack directly on the data center floor.
“Given the power demands for AI data centers, we’re exploring a fundamentally different approach to data center power architecture,” added Steve Hammond, Senior Research Advisor, NLR. “By moving power generation directly to the compute load, we eliminate the complex distribution paths and energy loss typical of traditional power systems, making the entire power process significantly more efficient and responsive.”
NLR will develop reference designs for both brownfield data center retrofits and greenfield facilities, including approaches for 800 VDC power distribution and fuel cell integration. NLR will also conduct digital real-time simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and transient testing to validate system performance and de-risk deployment.
From Research to Real-World Deployment
The project is designed to move beyond laboratory research and establish practical, scalable designs for fuel cell-powered data centers.
The collaboration includes a field demonstration of an advanced fuel cell-integrated power architecture at the Sky Data Centers site in Santa Rosa, California. The demonstration will evaluate fuel cell integration with evolving 800 VDC data center power architectures while assessing opportunities to reduce complexity, improve efficiency, and lower costs.
For Renewable Innovations, the demonstration builds on its history of working with NLR on fuel cell-powered data center applications. In an earlier collaboration, NLR, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the Renewable Innovations team demonstrated a 70 kW fuel cell integrated with cloud computing racks at NLR’s Energy Systems Integration Facility.
“Fuel cells offer an opportunity to rethink how power is generated, distributed and managed inside the data center,” said Mount. “We’re excited to work with NLR to demonstrate what that architecture can look like and help establish a pathway toward commercially scalable, resilient power for AI infrastructure.”
Building the Next Generation of Data Center Power
The collaboration comes as AI drives unprecedented growth in data center electricity demand and increasing pressure on traditional power infrastructure. The project will explore fuel cell architectures that can provide resilient power while potentially reducing electrical conversion losses, infrastructure complexity, noise, and water consumption.
The project team includes NLR, Renewable Innovations, NVIDIA, Energy Vault, DRG Technical Solutions, HPE Labs, Alderbuck Energy and Sky Data Centers, with additional industry organizations providing technical support and expertise. Together, the partners will work toward a commercialization-ready blueprint for fuel cell-powered data centers that can help accelerate the deployment of resilient, high-density computing infrastructure.
About Renewable Innovations
Renewable Innovations designs and develops advanced power systems that enable organizations to deploy resilient, scalable energy wherever it is needed. The company specializes in hydrogen fuel cell technologies, power generation, energy storage, and integrated power systems for critical infrastructure, data centers, transportation, and other demanding applications.
Learn more at Renewable-Innovations.com or contact us at media@renewable-innovations.com.
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