Data Centers Embrace Vegetable Oil as Cleaner Fuel for Generators

by Rich Miller (Data Center Frontier) A growing number of data centers are turning to vegetable oil to reduce their impact on the environment. This week Compass Datacenters became the latest company to adopt fuels based on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) to fuel the generators that provide backup power for their data centers.

Compass says that early tests of show that the use of HVO can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from its generators by as much as 85 percent. That’s why HVO is emerging as an important bridge to cleaner backup power, allowing data centers to move off of diesel fuel without having to replace thousands of generators that are both expensive and mission-critical.

The initial rollout will include generators at Compass campuses in Northern Virginia, Arizona and Texas, with Foster Fuels providing the HVO. Compass Chief Technology Officer Adil Attlassy says the initiative “will make our generators far more sustainable. Additionally, we are significantly reducing particulates and sulfides as compared to fossil fuels, eliminating diesel’s dirty smoke plume.”

The Compass announcement is part of a larger shift in the industry, which includes some of the largest operators. While it hasn’t made any press announcements, Equinix is laying the framework for broad adoption of HVO in its global data center footprint. Digital Realty has begun using an HVO blend in one of its Paris data centers, and STACK Infrastructure, Kao Data and Ark Data Centers are also testing the use of HVO in backup generators.

Many data center operators see hydrogen fuel cells as the most sustainable long-term solution for backup power. But hydrogen is years from viability at scale in production systems, and HVO is a promising option that can slash greenhouse gas emissions and works with existing equipment.

“We need generators, and they’re not going anywhere for a while,” Farney (Sean Farney, Executive Director for Data Center Strategy and Innovation at JLL) told DCF in a recent podcast. “They have a huge installed base, are extremely reliable, and have a global distribution replenishment infrastructure, so when you run out, a truck comes and fills you up.

“But if you come in and bring an alternative fuel, which burns cleaner and reduces your carbon impact across a fleet of thousands or 10s of thousands of units, that’s a that’s a pretty good compromise,” said Farney, who was previously an executive with Kohler Power, a generator vendor. “Replacing fuel doesn’t change your operations and maintenance protocols, and you can drive down your emissions. That’s a smart approach that evolves the current technology.”

In June 2021, Microsoft said the backup generators at its new data center in Sweden will run on a fuel that incorporates tall oil, a renewable byproduct of forestry and paper production. Microsoft worked with Caterpillar to ensure that Evolution offers the same technical performance as traditional fuels, with fewer net emissions. That was the first of a number of single-facility implementations. READ MORE