Safety Approach and Accomplishments during Fuel Cell Technology Demonstration at Microsoft Data Center

Hydrogen is seen as a potential solution to the ever-growing power demands of the datacenter market which in 2022 accounted for 240 – 340 TWh of global electricity consumptioni. As part of exploring hydrogen’s viability as a future solution, Caterpillar Inc. in collaboration with Microsoft and Ballard Power Systems recently demonstrated the use of large-format hydrogen fuel cells to supply reliable and sustainable backup power for data centers. The demonstration provided valuable insights into the capabilities of fuel cell systems to power multi-megawatt data centers, ensuring uninterrupted power supply to meet the 99.999% uptime requirements. At the same time, the project showcased the learning curve facing the power industry around identifying and implementing the best practices that have enabled safe expansion of the hydrogen market in the industrial sector over many decades.

This presentation will focus on how Caterpillar, Microsoft, NREL, and other partners collaborated to manage this safety learning curve, address gaps in current EHS approaches, establish requirements and activities that helped drive zero (0) lost time incidents on the project. We will take a deep dive into the safety approach implemented for this project. We will show how early planning, coordination with our partners, safety professionals, and subject matter experts—including CHS Hydrogen Safety Panel—facilitated our journey navigating the hazards of novel technologies such as large format fuel cells and battery energy storage. We will review our approach to identification of safety vulnerabilities and risk reduction and the mindset changes that were required to drive safety outcomes.