American Power Conversion Intros InfraStruXure IFCS

American Power Conversion Corp. (APCC, West Kingston, RI) announced its new InfraStruXure™ Integrated Fuel Cell System (IFCS), which offers hours of extended run time for IT applications with high availability requirements. APC's InfraStruXure architecture, which integrates power, cooling, management and services in a rack-optimized design, offers the ability to power IT systems using fuel cell technology.

The new 30 kW solution incorporates modular polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Three 10 kW modules per rack can be stacked to create a scalable solution. Energy is stored and supplied to the system via bottled hydrogen. Small-to-medium data centers are suitable applications for the early-adopter phase of the system. InfraStruXure with integrated fuel cells is suited for environments that may have limitations due to building code, emission requirements or physical constraints. Future phases of this program will include further integrated management via InfraStruXure Manager.

The new system, supported by APC's Global Services network, improves availability by minimizing points of failure with the system installed close to the load, lowers the total cost of ownership with a design life of 10 years or >5000 stop/starts, and improves agility by allowing power generation in more locations that may have emissions restrictions. The only system byproducts are heat and water.