Company Opens Co-Innovation Facility in Washington, D.C. as Part of Its Innovation and Sustainability Strategy
Equinix, the world’s digital infrastructure company, announced the opening of its first Co-Innovation Facility (CIF), located in its DC15 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center at the Equinix Ashburn Campus in the Washington, D.C. area. A component of Equinix’s Data Center of the Future initiative, the CIF is a new capability that enables partners to work with Equinix on trialing and developing innovations. These innovations, such as identifying a path to clean hydrogen-enabled fuel cells or deploying more capable battery solutions, will be used to help define the future of sustainable digital infrastructure and services globally.
Sustainable innovations, including liquid cooling, high-density cooling, intelligent power management and on-site prime power generation, will be incubated in the CIF in partnership with leading data center technology innovators including Bloom Energy, Zutacore, Virtual Power Systems (VPS) and Natron. In collaboration with Equinix, these partners will test core and edge technologies with a focus on proving reliability, efficiency and cost to build. These include:
- Generator-less and UPS-less Data Centers (Bloom Energy) – Utilizing on-site solid oxide fuel cells enables the data center to generate redundant cleaner energy on-grid, and potentially eliminates the need for fossil fuel-powered generators and power-consuming Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems.
- High-Density Liquid Cooling (ZutaCore) – Highly efficient, direct-on-chip, waterless, two-phase liquid cooled rack systems, capable of cooling upwards of 100 kW per rack in a light, compact design. Eliminates risk of IT meltdown, minimizes use of scarce resources including energy, land, construction and water, and dramatically shrinks the data center footprint.
- Software-Defined Power (VPS) with cabinet-mounted Battery Energy Storage (Natron Energy) – Cabinet power management and battery energy storage system manages power draw and minimizes power stranding to near zero percent, leading to a potential 30-50% improvement of power efficiency.
Deia Bayoumi, Vice President, Product Management, Bloom Energy, said, “Bloom Energy’s clean, modular fuel cell technology is well-suited to meet the growing demand for clean and resilient power among data centers. Building upon our continued collaboration with Equinix, we’re proud to bring our solution to the CIF and move the industry toward a more sustainable future. By generating power on-site with high levels of power availability and needed resiliency, data centers can take control of their sustainable energy needs. Bloom’s technology eliminates reliance on electricity utilities to meet capacity requirements as well as highly pollutive diesel generators to provide backup power.”
Udi Paret, President, ZutaCore, added, “ZutaCore is honored to be featured at the CIF and partner with Equinix to advance the proliferation of liquid cooling on a global scale. Together we aim to prove that liquid cooling is an essential technology in realizing fundamental business objectives for data centers of today and into the future. HyperCoolTM liquid cooling solutions deliver unparalleled performance and sustainability benefits to directly address sustainability imperatives. With little to no infrastructure change, it consistently provides easy to deploy and maintain, environmentally friendly, economically attractive liquid cooling to support the highest core-count, high power and most dense requirements for a range of customer needs from the cloud to the edge.”
Dean Nelson, CEO Virtual Power Systems (VPS), said, “Data centers of the future are software-defined. Our collaboration with Equinix, Natron Energy and CE+T in the Co-Innovation Facility showcases how VPS software unlocks stranded power, driving up utilization and enabling cloud-like flexibility on-prem. We’re proud to do our part in advancing Equinix’s sustainability goals.”
Colin Wessells, CEO, Natron Energy, said, “Natron is pleased to be an active part of the Equinix CIF with the deployment of our safe, sustainable, high-efficiency sodium-ion batteries. Natron’s Prussian blue sodium-ion batteries with >50,000 cycle-life, rapid charge/discharge and immediate availability are enabling new levels of IT system performance along with facility optimization within data center and edge deployments as demonstrated by Equinix.”
Raouf Abdel, EVP, Global Operations, Equinix, added, “The data center of the future must be sustainable. Equinix is committed to sustainability globally as evidenced by its target to be climate neutral across our business by 2030. We are well on our way with over 90% renewable energy coverage worldwide. And thanks to the work we’re doing with partners at the CIF, we’re continuing to make significant advancements in the way we design, build and operate our global platform, with high energy efficiency standards.”
Highlights / Key Facts:
- The Washington, D.C. area remains one of the most highly interconnected regions powering the global digital economy. Equinix’s data center campus in Ashburn, VA—home to the largest internet peering point in North America and one of the largest in the world—is a strategic communications hub for the eastern U.S. and a major gateway to Europe. The campus is the single most-dense interconnection hub in the U.S., providing proximity to financial enterprises, government, content and digital media services, global networks and cloud service providers.
- Last year, Equinix became the first in the data center industry to commit to globally reaching climate-neutral status by 2030, backed by science-based targets and an aggressive sustainability innovation agenda. Aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement, this is a critical step to ensure that Equinix continues to advance investments and innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
- Equinix’s approved emissions reduction target by the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) builds on the company’s strong track record of sustainable growth and innovation, including achieving over 90% renewable energy coverage for its data centers since 2018.
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