Online auction and shopping giant eBay is planning to build a data center that will harness its power from fuel cells, instead of the power generated from the national power grid. eBay will reportedly connect its data center to the grid for backup, but said that it will use an alternative power as a primary source for energy. This will make eBay the first major tech company to utilize fuel cells as its primary energy source.
eBay will be partnering with Bloom Energy for the said effort. “By being a trail blazer and deploying a brand new, revolutionary architecture to build its new data center, eBay is raising the standard for the entire industry. It is 21st century infrastructure for the industry needs of the 21st century,” eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said. eBay will incorporate 30 Bloom Energy servers into the new data center facility in Utah. The company hopes that it will be fully functional next year.
“The Bloom servers will power millions of transactions by eBay’s more than 102 million active users, who generate more than $69 billion in merchandise volume annually. The data center also will power activity across eBay’s other global commerce platforms, including PayPal and StubHub, enabling merchants, retail partners, buyers and sellers to do greener commerce,” eBay said via press release.
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