Verizon is now the latest customer of Silicon Valley’s buzzy fuel cell company Bloom Energy. The trend of telecom and Internet companies increasingly turning to clean power options continues to grow.
The Valley’s fuel cell startup Bloom Energy has now raised over $1.1 billion, according to a report. While Bloom has gotten strong traction, particularly with data center operators, fuel cell manufacturing is difficult and capital intensive business.
Verizon is making its largest commitment to clean power to date with a planned $100 million investment into installing solar panels and fuel cells at its facilities. The company joins the league of Apple and Google with its aggressive investments in distributed, renewable energy.
Bloom Energy’s fuel cells could revolutionize data center power architecture, says Bloom Energy’s new data center guru, Peter Gross, who joined the company this week as the Vice President of Mission Critical Systems.
Silicon Valley’s fuel cell maker Bloom Energy has launched a new practice focused on data centers, the company announced on Wednesday. To lead the group, Bloom Energy has brought on Peter Gross, who co-founded data-center firm EYP Mission Critical Facilities, which was bought by HP.
Fuel cell maker ClearEdge Power has scored the mother of all utility deals: a 50 MW, $500 million deal with Austrian utility Güssing Renewable Energy.
ClearEdge Power might not have amassed the funding of Bloom Energy, but it’s getting up there. On Tuesday fuel cell maker ClearEdge Power announced that it has raised a series E round of funding of $73.5 million.
In the grand scheme of energy technologies, the key component that makes up a fuel cell is relatively short-lived. This Achilles heel is one of the main reasons that the business of selling fuel cells is often times not profitable.
Fuel cell maker ClearEdge Power plans to launch a fuel cell line targeted at data-center operators later this year. The move is part of a larger trend of fuel cell makers eying data-center operators as a new market for distributed cleaner power.
Bloom Energy may capture the lion’s share of buzz among fuel cell startups, but ClearEdge Power has generated a fair amount of business for its $50,000 stationary fuel cell systems, including a new $40 million distribution deal for the Korean market.
